John Updike and Me
I first encountered John Updike through his Roger’s Version, a cosmological and theological treatise disguised as a porno novel. Updike, as he admitted in Roger’s Version, is really a Marcionite Heretic. This ancient heresy, most recently advanced by the German theologian Karl Barth, holds that God is wholly other, completely unapproachable by reason: theology and science are two non-overlapping magisteria. Technology, being of the natural world and hence other than God, is fundamentally bad.
The greatest challenge to Marcion/Barth is the Anthropic Principle, one version of which says that we can see the Hand of God in the fine-tuning of the laws of physics. Roger’s Version was an attack on this idea. The book’s climax was the humiliation of the idea’s defender, a hapless graduate student, by a wily old Harvard chemistry professor.
Oxford University Press published The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, which I coauthored with Cambridge University astronomer John D. Barrow, the year after Roger’s Version appeared. I sent a copy to Updike, pointing out that two real professors of cosmology could make a better case than a fictional graduate student. Updike replied — on a typewritten postcard; he refused to use computer technology — that he was not convinced by our arguments, but he was glad we were out there.
I think he was conciliatory because he was a bit nervous about taking on two professional cosmologists. But he regained his confidence. In an interview on C-SPAN, he said that he was inspired by reading my later Physics of Immortality to write his 1997 science fiction novel Toward the End of Time. My picture of the future of the universe is the ultimate progressive vision: using technology, we expand into space, engulf the universe, and live forever. In Updike’s view this is a horrible fate. Updike’s vision is the ultimate Luddite vision, unalterably opposed to technology.
In the November 1999 issue of the New Yorker, he explicitly rejected my proof for God’s existence, given “in his large, formula- and graph-ridden Physics of Immortality [Updike's description]” with “a God who could be proved would be an inescapable tyrant, an inert and imprisoning datum. Belief, like love, must be voluntary.”
We will all get explanations from that same Master.
I came to the same belief on my own, without these books. The world tells us about God. The Bible tells us about God. Science tells us about God. God cannot be hurt (disproven) by science. All we do is come to understand how He did what He did, or just simply end up amazed.
I find it amusing that people cannot see that the story of Genesis matches very closely to the Ovoid theory (Big Bang). Man, that was such a great guess on the part of those primitive people thousands of years ago!
People are just thrown off by Adam and Eve. Science shows us that the world is older than the Bible tells us. Folks, Adam was not the first Man. He was the first Jew. There were already others in the world. See Cain’s fearful reaction to being exiled. Every man’s hand will be turned against me. What men? How many are out there? 2? 3?
Evolution? Can’t find a single fossil showing the changes in species. No intermediates. They’re made from whole cloth. Did the world exist before man? Sure. Species pop up and disappear whole. The best thing that can be said about evolution is that it MIGHT explain how God did SOME things. Might.
de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est
Why wait until after Updike is dead to attack his ideas?
From where does an electron come from and where does it go when the matter is dead? Which type of explosion creates matter? Where in the universe or in which laboratory has inert matter created organic matter (life)?
Where does love come from, where does it go? Does love give birth to truth, from which justice grows?
You show me an explosion, I’ll see destruction. You show me love and truth, I’ll see life.
Great science and great theology are both founded on the implacable attraction of mystery. If Updike, whom I admired as a writer and thinker, really believed God and nature to be totally separated–that seeking God was useless, that we could only wait to be found by Him, then I understand Updike’s “Requiem” poem in a new light. No wonder he saw life as a “shabby subterfuge” and death as “real and dark and huge.”
There is no need for us to wait for God to seek us out–He has never lost us; it has been the other way around. Every mystery we encounter only serves to motivate us, whether by science or theology, seek that much deeper.
Religion is the why, science is the what and how. Heck, even morality can be dissected by science. Choosing a morality because its effects are ‘good’ is religion.
2. Marc Malone:
We’re probably just going to have to disagree about evolution of species. The bible just says that God made them, all it specified was the order (plants first, humans last). The how is wide open.
I’ve played around a little with genetic algorithms. Ever once and a while a really useful mutation occurs and takes over a large proportion of the population. I think that’s a reasonable thing to happen in real life.
I suggest playing around with an artificial life simulator to get an idea of what I’m talking about. Plus it can be rather interesting and fun. Evolve 4.0 is pretty good: http://www.stauffercom.com/evolve4/
Is there a GOD of course! Can science prove that there is GOD naturally. Is GOD a Christian? Not exclusively:
One reason man took 14.7 billion years to get us to where we are at present is most likely for the same reason at present that science and religion can’t reach a consensus. Everyone wants a franchise on GOD, Cosmologists, Theologians,Tent preachers, of the modern day want GOD all to themselves.And it is my reasoning that this argument has been going on since the first man who developed logic and speech has been around.As you have pointed out GOD is unprovable, both by science and religion.
Both imprison the mind to clearly seeing (knowing)that GOD exists. Instinctively man retains GOD within. It is the attempt to reason GOD as something that we might be capable of understanding on man’s terms that forces us away from knowing what we already know. GOD needs no words of explanation. Even quantum physics only presents a key to a door that once opened will be presented with disproof, at the same time irrefutable knowledge of the existence of GOD
The problem with a material explanation of God is that as our understanding of the material universe increases, God continues to loose ground. From the Enlightenment to the present, those who have held on to a material explanation and proof of God’s existence have doomed themselves or those who come after them to disappointment after disappointment. The ‘separate Majisteria’ of faith and science is now accepted doctrine in many religions. Those with a more literal take on the bible are setting themselves up for yet more disappointment. When it turns out that God’s existence does not reside in a primordial enzyme or deep fundamental principal, then what? Search for some deeper structure, something yet more fundamental? Updike may lack the scientific sophistication to explain himself fully, but by intelligent intuition he’s on the right track. If you disallow ‘separate majisteria’ your argument isn’t with Updike it’s with the likes of Steven Weinberg. You won’t find him intimidated by debate with a couple of professors of cosmology.
With all due respect, I think that Dr. Tipler’s interpretation of the anthropic physics is over the top.
Instead of being “designed”, think of the observed anthropic cosmological constraint on the forces of the universe as an *inherent* energy conservation law that enables the universe to periodically “leap/bang” to higher orders of the same basic configuration in order to preserve causality, the arrow of time, and the second law of thermodynamics… indefinitely… … …
Then you have a perpetually evolving structure, where all of the so-called “anthropic problems” are resolved without need for apparent absurdities, like inflation or a singularity, when a causally connected universe with volume has a big bang, which also very simply and intuitively resolves all of the “anthropic problems”, found here, as well as the rest of them:
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/209/mar31/anthropic.html
The following is two of many valid examples that I can give of the physics that proves how this mechanism works via asymmetric transitions that occur when we and others like us make matter/antimatter particles from the rarefied mass-energy which comprises this vacuum that science abandoned long-ago:
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2006-02/msg0073320.html
http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2007/10/18/
(This new information makes apparent the cosmological model naturally produces a theory of quantum gravity in a constantly changing background.)
This is the asymmetrical thermodynamic function, as it is referred to by Richard Dawkins as the “anti-chance mechanism” of natural selection:
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASYMTRANS.html
Richard Dawkins said:
“Natural selection is an anti-chance process, which gradually builds up complexity, step by tiny step. The end product of this ratcheting process is an eye, or a heart, or a brain – a device whose improbable complexity is utterly baffling until you spot the gentle ramp that leads up to it.”
Illustrated:
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASYMILL.html
Necessity would appear to demand a thermodynamic energy conservation law that enables the universe of finite volume to “leap/bang/evolve” to higher orders of the same basic configuration… just like we did… in order to preserve the arrow of time, causality and the second law of thermodynamics, indefinitely… … … necessity demands it!
Because a true Anthropic Cosmological Principle MUST NECESSARILY include the human evolutionary process.
I think we’ll never reach an ultimate definition of “God” – the concept keeps moving and growing as our understanding of the world and of oursleves evolves.
I suspect that the end will be a realization that the universe and God are one and the same. “Doing God’s work” is really be in harmony with the Universe and its workings.
As to Updike, I read his “Rabbit” starter and was so depressed by his vision that I left him at that. Over rated by liberals was my critical conclusion.
#10 islan – Interesting stuff. I’ll admit that I didn’t follow it all completely, but mostly. I understand all the terms, but I lack the depth of background to understand the references. Still, to me, it sounds like you’re scientifically describing a theory of God, or at least an explanation of the how of Intelligent design. Perhaps I missed something?
As I get it, these processes build up within the design memory of the organism. Eventually, the species evolves suddenly, or some of it does, and the old dies out as it is edged out by a more successful organism occupying the same niche. That would account for the lack of fossil records showing any intermediate forms. However, it doesn’t explain the Cambrian explosion, during which, massive amounts of new species just simply appeared, apparently from nothing. This is apparently done in each epoch, like God occasionally tearing up his garden and replanting.
No matter how much I read on the subject, I never find a conflict between solid scientific evidence and the Creation theory. Some theories conflict, but those that conflict always end up having holes in them that get exposed over time.
Not sure I understood enough of the physics links, other than to think that the theories allow for both a finite and an infinite universe. To me, it sounds like the universe is infinite, but the expansion will not be. Eventually, it will all collapse back to the ovoid as entropy takes effect. Then, we’ll have another Big Bang (Big Flash; there’s no sound in space), and the process will start all over again.
I think you were trying to draw a parallel between the two theories (physics and evolution), but I can’t see the validity of the parallel. Maybe I’m just sorta dense and ‘misconscrewed’ the physics part. You presented it as evolving, and I got it as self-regenerating.
Anyway, thanks for the info. Interesting stuff. Gives me something to think about.
Who could ever believe something like a man claiming to be the son of God?
After all what evidence is there? All of those manuscripts and testimony and people who saw with their own eyes the miraculous deeds of this man.
Who could believe just his powerful presence would turn 12 ordinary men into the founders of a new religion?
Who could believe all of the scriptures collected into one magnificent volume?
Who could believe this man could die and be resurrected from death into eternal life? And finally, who could believe that believing this man was the Son of God would be the most difficult and agonizing choice a mortal man could make?
The universe and God are not one and the same. The universe is his creation but he is the creator. The painting and the painter are not the same thing.
Still, to me, it sounds like you’re scientifically describing a theory of God, or at least an explanation of the how of Intelligent design. Perhaps I missed something?
Yes, it’s just thermodynamics, not god.
I’ve been trying several different ways to clarify in layman’s terms, but I’m not having a whole lot of success, but it’s easiest to think of a near-perfectly round ball that is forever rolling down-hill trying to make itself perfectly round.
Then it gets more difficult…
There is no need for a god when there is no beginning nor end to this perpetual “downhill” effort in the direction of absolute balanced symmetry between matter and antimatter.
There is an inherent disequilibrium in the energy of the universe, and this imbalance is the impetus that drives it to move toward reconciliation. But you can’t get there from here when the imbalance is inherent, so the universe must out of necessity continuously evolve to a more-efficient configuration or energy isn’t be conserved.
Note, for an empirical example, that humans got dramatically better at increasing entropy when we leaped from apes to harness fire, and beyond… … … …
Same thermodynamic mechanism, is all.
Disclaimer:
Don’t count on any of this until the Large Hadron Collider comes up empty handed when they fire it up this spring, but do remember this if they don’t find the Higgs boson or other new physic in a reasonable amount of time.
RE: everybody:
1) “I rest. The gasps of your tiny minds trying to encompass me – yardbirds quacking by a pond – are quite disruptive. Quit and get lost.” (To the PJM readership: care to credit this?”
2) “[...] “Mutton must be going out of fashion,” said Illidge. “Like God,” he added provocatively, “and the immortal soul.” Lord Edward was not to be baited….[Illidge] was interrupted and Lord Edward saved from further persecution by the ringing of the telephone bell.
“I’ll deal with it,” said Illidge, jumping up from his place.
He put the receiver to his ear. “Hullo!”
“Edward, is that you?” said a deep voice not unlike Lord Edward’s own. “This is me. Edward, I’ve just this moment discovered a most extraordinary mathematical proof of the existence of God, or rather of….”
“But this isn’t Lord Edward,” shouted Illidge. “Wait. I’ll ask him to come.” He turned back to the Old Man. “It’s Lord Gattenden,” he said. “He’s just discovered a new proof of the existence of God.” He did not smile, his tone was grave. Gravity in the circumstances was the wildest derision. The statement made fun of itself. Laughing comment made it less, not more ridiculous. Marvellous old imbecile! Illidge felt himself revenged for all the evening’s humiliations. “A mathematical proof,” he added, more seriously than ever.
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Lord Edward, as though something deplorable had happened. Telephoning always made him nervous. He hurried to the instrument. “Charles, is that….”
“Ah, Edward,” cried the disembodied voice of the head of the family from forty miles away at Gattenden. “Such a really remarkable discovery. I wanted your opinion of it. About God. You know the formula: ‘m’ over nought equals infinity, ‘m’ being any positive number? Well, why not reduce the equation to a simpler form by multiplying both sides by nought? In which case you have ‘m’ equals infinity times nought. That is to say that a positive number is the product of zero and infinity. Doesn’t that demonstrate the creation of the universe by an infinite power out of nothing? Doesn’t it?” The diaphragm of the telephone receiver was infected by Lord Gattenden’s excitement forty miles away. It talked with breathless speed; its questions were earnest and insistent.
“Doesn’t it, Edward”? All his life the fifth marquess had been looking for the absolute. It was the only sort of hunting possible for a cripple. For fifty years he had trundled in his wheeled chair at the heels of the elusive quarry. Could it be that he had now caught it, so easily, and in such an unlikely place as an elementary schoolbook on the theory of limits? It was something that justified excitement. “What’s your opinion, Edward?”
“Well,” began Lord Edward, and at the other end of the electrified wire, forty miles away, his brother knew, from the tone in which that single word was spoken, that it was no good. The Absolute’s tail was still unsalted. [...]“
Jeff Minick:Touche!What a snide piece,kicking a man after he is dead….
Karl Barth a “Marcionite Heretic” who believed that things things other that God are “fundamentally bad”?
What utter BS. Why do people like Tipler assume that their specialized knowledge in one field gives them the ability to speak/write authoritatively about things they (obviously) know nothing about?
Please, go back to your equations, and leave theology alone.