THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN OF THE COSMOS

ABSTRACT

Are there multiple Universes with differing laws of nature? Is the production of a life-friendly Universe an accident, as Martin Rees claims in his “Just Six Numbers” (1999)? Rees’ arguments are critically analysed. The Cosmos is shown to be an intelligent design, a freely operating process involving both self-organisation and human self-creation. Homo sapiens evolve as Hominids and become human by developing their cognitive capacities and then by creating their moral and spiritual personalities.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Science indicates that the present state of the Universe, including our life-friendly planet and life itself, is a product of certain precise Mathematical Constants that were imprinted into the Cosmos at the time of the Big Bang. Laws of nature are one function of these Mathematical Constants. If any one of these Constants had varied even slightly then there could be no stars, no planets and no life. As Mathematics is a product of mind, the Cosmos would appear to be a product of a Mind, an intelligent design. Martin Rees, in his “Just Six Numbers” (1999) sets out to provide a counter to this obvious inference.

The Cosmos began with the Big Bang. Two explanations of the origin of the Big Bang are to be considered here. One is that the Big Bang was an intelligent design. The other is that the Big Bang was just one of a great number of such events, which gave rise to multiple distinct universes, with different laws of nature. This is the position favoured by Martin Rees in his “Just Six Numbers” (1999).

Rees does not explain why a large number of universes would necessarily vary from one another. He appears to assume that any universe is a matter of chance and that in any large number of similar chance events there will be unexplained variability. Is this really the case?

We all know what chance is. If a coin is tossed we believe that “chance” will determine whether it falls heads or tails. But that is not really the case. If we construct a machine to provide an identical impetus and angle to the toss, the coin will fall predictably. “Chance” is often an admission of ignorance as to all causal factors.

We all know what Unicorns are, just as we all know what chance is. But neither really exists. Chance and Unicorns are just epistemological concepts. They are not ontological realities. That is not the only problem with Rees’ view.

On the Rees view we just happen to inhabit the one universe that is habitable. However the possible existence of other universes does not explain in any way the origin of our Universe, so we need to consider whether Rees’ contribution to the understanding of our universe supports his view that this universe is “an ‘oasis’ in a multiverse” or whether we should, in his words: “seek other reasons for the providential values of our six numbers.” (1999, 179)

SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE

Science is specialised knowledge. All knowledge stems from the questions we ask in applying the Principle of Sufficient Reason: “Every thing has a reason for being, and for being as it is.” This Principle recognises the rationality of the contingent world, and the rational potential of humans.

Some sciences are insightful and experimental while others are observational and insightful. In the first type a scientist has some insight into reality and experimental tests are devised in the effort to test the validity of the insight. In the second type the scientist can make no experiment but can form insights from observations of reality, as Darwin did, or by discovering relationships between other scientists’ findings, as Einstein did. Physical Cosmology belongs to the second type of science.

A Philosophical Cosmology goes a step further. It seeks to understand the reason for the existence of the Cosmos, why it is, why it is the way it is, and why it has developed the way it has. Rees’ approach, which deals with the reason for the existence of the Cosmos, is a Philosophical Cosmology. It stands to be tested as such.

Rees is on firm scientific ground when he states: “Mathematical laws underpin the fabric of our universe – not just atoms, but galaxies, stars and people. The properties of atoms – their sizes and masses, how many different kinds there are, and the forces linking them together – determine the chemistry of our everyday world. The very existence of atoms depends on forces and particles deep inside them. The objects astronomers study – planets, stars and galaxies – are controlled by the force of gravity. And everything takes place in the arena of an expanding universe, whose properties were imprinted into it at the time of the initial Big Bang.” (1999, 1)

Rees notes that: “These six numbers constitute a ‘recipe’ for a universe. Moreover, the outcome is sensitive to their values as: “if any one of them were to be ‘untuned’, there would be no stars and no life.” (1999, 4)

Rees moves into Philosophical Cosmology when he asks “Is this tuning just a brute fact, a coincidence? Or is it the providence of a benign Creator?” (1999, 4) He does not deal with the last possibility directly. Instead he proposes that: “An infinity of other universes may well exist where the numbers are different. Most would be stillborn or sterile”. (1999, 4)

Rees argues that: “some assumptions, consistent with everything we know, yield many universes that sprout from separate Big Bangs into disjoint regions of space-time”. He admits that these: “universes would never be directly observable; we couldn’t even meaningfully say whether they existed ‘before’ or ‘after’ or alongside our own”. He also notes that: “The input assumptions that predict multiple universes are still speculative.” (1999, 168)

Rees does not detail the “assumptions, consistent with everything we know” that “yield many universes that sprout from separate Big Bangs into disjoint regions of space time”. This proposal is reminiscent of speculation in the area of quantum physics. If this is the case Rees is simply making a category mistake, “presenting the facts of one category in the idiom of another”, or assuming that the facts of one category of reality automatically apply in a different category.

Based on his assumptions Rees adopts the view: “that our six numbers are accidents of cosmic history”, a view for which he admits there is, and there can be, no evidence. He admits the absence of evidence, saying his view: “is only a hunch” (1999, 174). A hunch is neither experiment nor observation. It does not qualify as Science, nor, in the absence of supporting argument, as Philosophy.

REES’ THREE POSSIBILITIES

Altogether Rees suggests three possibilities to account for the Big Bang, (1) a multiplicity of other universes “where the numbers are different”, (2) a benign Creator, and (3) a brute fact, which Rees equates with a coincidence. A brute fact is not a coincidence.

A brute fact has been defined as: “a fact that obtains without doing so in virtue of any other facts obtaining” (Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy). Every contingent thing obtains by virtue of some other fact obtaining, so any brute fact must be self-existent. A self-existent entity does not require, and by definition cannot have, some other fact in its explanation.

A non-contingent, self-existent entity, is the only possible brute fact. Such an entity is indistinguishable from the concept of God. This appears to reduce Rees’ possibilities to two, a multiverse or a benign Creator.

There is no evidence of the existence of multiple universes. There is no necessity for multiple universes to explain the existence or the nature of this universe. The application of Occam’s razor, “Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity” to Rees’ postulate of “multiple universes” is sufficient to dispose of this postulate. This would leave Rees’ other option, the action of “a benign Creator” as the best explanation of the beginning of the Cosmos.

Rees misinterprets Occam’s razor as: “a bias in favour of ‘simple’ cosmologies”, (1999, 172-3) whereas it is a principle of ontological economy, one original formulation of which is: “What can be done with fewer assumptions is done in vain with more.”

Rees admits that if multiple universes did exist, we would never be able to know anything about them. His postulate of multiple but unknowable universes simply avoids the primary philosophical question of the origin and purpose of our universe. His view that this universe is “an ‘oasis’ in a multiverse” is completely without foundation. We should therefore, in his words: “seek other reasons for the providential values of our six numbers.” (1999, 179) Is there any other evidence that could resolve the issue? Perhaps the evidence that the Big Bang initiated a purposeful process within the Cosmos should suffice. Developments within the Cosmos indicate that it exists for a purpose.

THE BIG BANG AND THE PROCESS OF EMERGENT EVOLUTION

The Big Bang was a complex event which would seem to have required an intelligent cause. The Big Bang was the beginning of Time and the provision of the Energy and the Information that make the present Cosmos possible. This Information has its base in the Mathematical Constants “imprinted into it at the time of the initial Big Bang”. It finds its ultimate expression in the laws of nature.

Rees’ identification of the effects of these Mathematical Constants provides support for the conclusions I reached in my 1998 Thesis, “The Process of the Cosmos”. The relation between Mathematical Constants and laws of nature provides a better explanation of the phenomenon of Emergent Evolution than the one I proposed in my Thesis. I am indebted to him for this.

EMERGENT EVOLUTION

Samuel Alexander, in his “Space, Time and Deity” (1920) distinguished each new Emergent stage on the basis of it operating according to a new level of natural law. He showed that each Emergent stage is based on the previous Emergent stage, is subject to the same laws of nature as the previous stage, but is also subject to a new level of natural law. These natural laws are not prescriptive laws. They are statements of observed regularities at the various Emergent stages.

Alexander postulated four Emergent stages, Matter, Life, Mind and Moral Personality. Alexander considered that Mind could be regarded as an Emergent when it manifested consciousness. I would limit the present Emergent stages to three, understanding the Mind of Homo sapiens to be a product of Hominid self-development rather than a new Emergent stage with its own new stage of natural law.

Alexander distinguished intelligent life from instinctive life, but we now recognize that any distinction between forms of life is simply a matter of degree. Homo sapiens’ cognitive self-development does not involve the introduction of a new stage of the laws of nature. The Emergent stage that follows the emergence of Life is Alexander’s stage of Moral Personality. This stage involves the application of a new stage of law, the Moral Law. I refer to this Emergent stage as the Moral-Cultural Stage.

The relation between the Mathematical Constants and the laws of nature indicates that a new Emergent Stage can only become possible when an existing stage develops to a degree that makes it capable of expressing a previously unexpressed aspect of the Information that was provided by the Mathematical Constants. This newly expressed Information gives rise to the new Emergent Stage, with its own new laws of nature. The Moral-cultural Stage exemplifies this development.

THE COSMIC PROCESS

In the Cosmic Process Matter emerges from the Energy and some of the Information provided by the Mathematical Constants, which finds its ultimate expression in the laws of nature. The Physical and Chemical laws of matter are products of the Mathematical Constants. Matter is formed - or Informed - Energy. Life subsequently emerges as Informed Matter. The Genetic laws of Life reflect a previously unexpressed aspect of the Information provided by the Mathematical Constants.

Life emerges on Earth and freely evolves. All life is capable of detecting information in some form. Each species can instinctively detect the information that is necessary for its survival as a species. Primitive life-forms detect only rudimentary information. As the Evolutionary process continues it produces more complex species, each with the capacity to detect the greater range of information that is necessary for that species’ survival.

Among the most complex species are the Hominids, including Homo neanderthalis and Homo sapiens.

The large-brains of these Hominid species provide the potential for them to develop their information gathering capacity beyond that which is necessary for the species survival.

TIME AND THE COSMIC PROCESS

Time has an essential role to play in the process of the Cosmos. Without Time there could be no process, no evolution and no human self-development. The beginning of Time, together with the Energy and the Mathematical Constants imprinted into the Big Bang, initiated the process of Emergent Evolution.

The unlimited Time available for the Cosmos to develop, and the extent of the material Universe, are sufficient to ensure that at some time, in some part of the Cosmos, at least one life-friendly planet will develop from the random processes of material self-organization. Earth is such a planet. The Cosmic process leads to the Emergence and self-organization of Matter and then to the Emergence and self-organization of Life, through the process of Evolution.

Matter is the first Emergent from the Energy and Information of the Big Bang. The first Element formed, Hydrogen, is gradually transmuted into all the Elements of the Periodic Table in the formation and dissolution of Stars. Planetary Solar systems are formed within this process. Life is the second Emergent. Life originates when some combination of Matter, in appropriate circumstances, becomes capable of expressing the Information that establishes the laws of Life. Life emerges on Earth, and possibly on other planets, and begins to freely evolve.

The products of Evolution are far more diverse than the products of the previous Emergent stage of Matter. Evolution relies on natural selection but it also requires the self-organization and subsequent re-organization of the Genome to produce the new life-forms that present for selection. Perhaps so-called ‘Junk DNA’ is the ‘software’ that allows these more complex organisms to evolve, as Professor John Mattick of Queensland University has suggested.

The evolutionary process produces ever more complex creatures, eventually producing large-brained Hominids, including Homo neanderthalis, some 230,000 years ago, and Homo sapiens, some 160,000 years ago.

These Hominids evolved as species of animals, not as humans. Homo neanderthalis had larger brains than Homo sapiens, whose brain was indistinguishable from that of modern humans. Homo sapiens’ brain has not changed since the species evolved, but the species has developed a mind. The human mind is primarily the result of a process of cognitive self-development, which gradually changes Homo sapiens from hominid to human.

THE ORIGIN OF MIND AND THE ROLE OF CULTURE

For more than 100,000 years after the evolution of Homo sapiens, neither Homo neanderthalis nor Homo sapiens appear to have initiated any activity that differed from the instinctive hunting and gathering activities of other earlier Hominids. Some 40,000 years ago Homo sapiens began to show the first unmistakable signs of cultural development in the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution. They began to produce better thought-out tools and more significant symbolic representations than previously.

Homo sapiens were developing from being a species of animal in a habitat to becoming human persons in a community. They were using their cognitive capacities to acquire and utilize information other than the instinctive information that was necessary for their survival as a species. They had begun to develop a mind.

This cognitive self-development led to the creation of the first human cultures. The development of the mind is exemplified in the formation of cultures. A culture is a product of thought, not of evolution. Cultures reflect the development of new forms of activity by individual humans. They also facilitate the process of human self-creation.

People form and can modify cultures, and cultures, to a significant extent, form the people of the culture. All cultural development is initially dependent upon individual cognitive self-development, as individuals develop new skills and form new ideas that can influence the individual’s culture. Cultures can either promote or inhibit the formation of new ideas. A culture which suffers from the affliction of certainty, which considers it has all the answers, will inhibit the questioning of old ideas and so prevent cultural development. There are modern examples of this phenomenon.

Homo neanderthalis, despite having a bigger brain, did not develop any new cultural forms. Initially both species lived similar lives, sometimes in the same environment, indicating similar cognitive capacities. But Homo neanderthalis died out at about the same time that Homo sapiens began to develop cultures. Neanderthals were probably out-competed by Homo sapiens, who had developed their initial cognitive capacity. This development may well have been necessary to counter the superior strength and bigger natural brain-power of the Neanderthals.

Millennia later Homo sapiens began to form permanent settlements based on horticulture and agriculture, indicating a further degree of cognitive self-development. These developments required individual humans to have formed some understanding of the natural processes that led to the production of food, and then to work out how to intervene in such processes to make them more productive. The process of human cognitive self-development, both individual and cultural, continues today, varying from culture to culture. Some human cultures, including Australian Aborigines, still exist at the primitive cognitive stage of hunter-gatherers.

CULTURE AND MORALITY

Every culture is based on some explanation of the world. As T.S. Elliott noted, every culture is the incarnation of a belief-system. Belief-systems provide an explanation of the world and of the place of man in the world.

Early belief-systems were expressed as Myth. Many present belief-systems are still influenced by Myth. Prior to 3,000 years ago belief-systems appear to have had no moral content. Some even prescribed immoral activities, including human sacrifice and temple prostitution. About 3,000 years ago some people, notably the Jews and the Greeks, began to reason more clearly and to perceive that human situations have a moral dimension.

It appears that people have to begin to think clearly before they begin to acquire a moral sensibility. The first Western cultures to develop both rationally and morally were the Greeks and the Jews. The Greek emphasis was on critical thought and Philosophy, the Jewish emphasis was on moral action and Theology.

Principled moral perceptions are still rare. Only a minority of people achieve Kohlberg’s stage of Principled Morality, indicating direct cognitive awareness of the Information provided by the moral law. Most people still lack this moral-cognitive capacity. Such people base their morality on what their society accepts, hence the importance of cultural belief-systems that enjoin high moral standards.

When people first began to have moral insights, these were necessarily unprecedented. In the Jewish world those who had moral insights, and expounded them, were called Prophets. The Prophets accounted for their insights, and explained them to others, as their having heard the word of God. In Greece Socrates explained his moral insights similarly. These moral insights give expression to a new stage of law, Samuel Alexander’s Emergent stage of Moral Personality, based on the Moral Law.

THE POSSIBILITY OF FURTHER EMERGENT STAGES

Each new Emergent stage is based on the previous stage,

is subject to the same laws of nature as the previous stage, but is also accompanied by a new level of natural law that serves to distinguish it from the previous stage. The most recent Emergent stage is the Moral-Cultural Stage, the equivalent of Alexander’s stage of Moral Personality, which involved the application of a new level of law, the Moral Law.

Homo sapiens, an evolved animal species, began to become human by accessing and utilising physical information beyond that which was necessary for the species survival. This was the first stage of human self-development. The capacity to access and apply moral information was the next stage. Any further sub-stage would be the product of a similar process of human Moral-cultural self-creation. Perhaps the present Moral-Cultural stage is transitional to a further stage, in which the Moral Law becomes inherent in individual persons.

THE INCREASE IN FREEDOM

Nicolai Hartmann was the first to note the increase in freedom at each of the ontological strata of reality, and the total freedom that was achieved at the moral or spiritual stratum where, in his words: “The moral law commands but cannot compel.” Hartmann distinguished four ontological strata; the physical, the biological or organic, the conscious or psychic and the spiritual or moral. Man is the only real being in which all four ontological strata are represented. These four strata are similar to Alexander’s Emergent Stages of Matter, Life, Conscious Life and Moral Personality.

Freedom is essential to the Cosmic Process. The initial provision of Time, Energy and the Mathematical Constants made all the subsequent cosmic developments possible, but did not mandate them. The result is a rational series of Emergent stages with increasing freedom at each Emergent stage. The Cosmic Process appears to have a direction and purpose, but it appears that its purpose can only be achieved with freedom and through the exercise of freedom

The Emergent Process is characterised by increasing freedom. There is a degree of freedom at the Emergent stages of Matter and Life. Both Stages develop by self-organisation, within the parameters established by the Mathematical Constants. Galaxies, Solar systems and the Elements of the Periodic Table develop at the Emergent Stage of Matter. A wide range of living forms evolve at the Stage of Life. Total freedom is attained at the human Moral-cultural Emergent Stage.

THE PURPOSE OF THE PROCESS

The Multiple Universe scenario that Rees favours is not justified by any scientific evidence or by any convincing argument. The Cosmic process is not merely a series of random events within a mindless multiplicity of Universes, as Rees’ argument suggests. It is clearly designed to enable the development of conscious beings that could freely develop their cognitive abilities, eventually becoming aware of the Moral Law and beginning to develop their spiritual and moral personalities.