Hawking Left Our Privileged Planet on an Absurd Note

His Legacy Might Be Called ‘On the Origin
of a Fine-Tuned Universe from Nothing’

 

 

by Jerry Bergman, PhD

One of the strongest evidences in support of the intelligent design concept is the fine-tuning of both the Earth and the universe. So far, all attempts to explain this reality by Darwinian naturalism have failed. This has not stopped naturalists from trying, though.  One of the latest attempts was by Stephen Hawking’s co-worker, Belgian cosmologist Professor Thomas Hertog. In a tribute to the late Stephen Hawking, the New Scientist Magazine wrote:

There was no one quite like Stephen Hawking. His work on cosmology dealt with extremely arcane mathematics, yet he was, until his death in 2018, the most recognizable scientist in the world. He explored the deepest mysteries of the universe, but he also appeared on The Simpsons…. Hawking’s most famous contribution concerns the nature of black holes. …. Today, many see this black hole conundrum as the most likely route to a more unified theory of physics…. Has Hawking done it again with his final theorem? It turns out that, later in life, he spent 20 years pondering the question of why, out of all the possibilities, the universe has the particular properties that make it so well suited for life.[1]

Hawking recognized the fact that “The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron… The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”[2] The topic Hawking worked on with Professor Hertog and other scientists for the last two decades of his life was “Why is the universe just right for life to arise?”[3] The fact that the universe is fine-tuned for life implies a fine-tuner that most people call God. However,

Hertog et al.’s goal was to explain the origin of the universe without an intelligent creator. They attempted this by coming up with a naturalistic explanation. The gist of their “idea is that the laws of physics ‘evolved’ shaped by the early universe.”[4] Have they supported this claim with solid empirical evidence? Their conclusion is that life and everything else has evolved, and like everything else, “the laws of physics themselves have, in a sense, evolved to be the way they are.” Although they spoke of the universe as being designed, they were referring to the observation that, of all the universes that could exist, ours is spectacularly well configured to bring forth and support life.

Thus, when billions of universes were evolving, those which evolved in such a way that life could not exist, could not support life. They are floating around void of life. Consequently, these universes contained no life to ponder about the details of their universe. Within those few universes that evolved in such a way that they could support life, the life form(s) could ask the question, “Why is the universe just right for life to arise?”[5] Even in those universes which had evolved to support life, but within which life itself had not evolved, there also would not be any life forms to ask this question. Our universe evolved both to support life, and also evolved life, so we therefore can speculate about if the universe was designed.

The major problem with this theory is that although Darwinian reasoning assumes that life can evolve if the conditions are correct, there does not exist any empirical documentation that life itself could have developed by evolution anywhere in the universe. In fact, no one knows how life could even have evolved on Earth, which is the only place in the universe known to support life.[6]

Consequently, Hawking concluded: “The universe’s biofriendliness, it turns out, concerns the laws of physics themselves. There are numerous features in these laws that render the universe just right for living things. Twiddle ever so slightly with any of these and habitability would often hang in the balance.”[7] The problem is the origin of the more than three dozen constants of nature that must exist for life to exist. Some of these include the strengths of the fundamental forces and the masses of elementary particles which are fine-tuned for life. As an example of a constant in the fine-tuned universe, Hertog noted that

the Higgs boson, which weighs as much as 133 protons…may sound heavy (for a particle), but it is 100 million billion times lighter than many physicists would consider a natural mass. The Higgs boson couples to other particles of matter and, in this way, imbues them with mass, but these couplings also add to the Higgs’s own mass, so you would expect it to be a far weightier beast. The unbearable lightness of the Higgs is crucial for life, however, for a light Higgs keeps electrons, protons, neutrons and so on, light as well. That, in turn, ensures that the building blocks of life, such as DNA, proteins and cells, don’t collapse under the force of gravity.[8]

This example actually shows only that the level of fine-tuning is greater than previously believed. Darwinists respond by postulating that ten billion universes must exist instead of just one billion. If another example of fine-tuning is discovered, Darwinists will likely respond by postulating that 100 billion universes must exist instead of a mere ten billion. Another example of a set of constants involves the expansion of the universe:

In 1998, cosmologists discovered that the expansion of space has been accelerating for about 5 billion years. The cause of this acceleration is often attributed to something known as vacuum energy… . But the density of vacuum energy seems to be 10^120 times lower than physicists expect based on theory. If the vacuum energy density of the universe were just a tad larger, however, its repulsive effect would be stronger and acceleration would have kicked in much earlier. This would have meant that matter was so sparsely distributed that it couldn’t clump together to form stars and galaxies, once again precluding the formation of life.[9]

One fix for this problem would be postulating 1,000 billion universes (= 1 trillion) instead of a mere 100 billion. As more constants are added, the problem is expanded, requiring more universes. A probability calculation of all of the known constants, and the evolution of all variations possible, produces numbers so enormous that there would have to be over a sextillion (10²¹) universes to account for them all.

No Evidence for Any Other Universe than Our Own

The major problem, which even Hawking recognized, is that we have no empirical evidence of any other universe other than our own. It is a metaphysical construct. Secondly, by definition the universe consists of all space, time, and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy.[10] If another universe existed, given this definition, it would be part of our universe.

Thirdly, the idea of constants evolving is just that, an idea, actually more of a thought. The laws and constants of science cannot be changed. The mass of an electron is 9.1093837 × 10-31 kilograms and the mass of the proton is 1.67 x 10-18 kilograms. If slightly different, either plus or minus this value, stable atoms would not exist.

Hawking does not explain how laws like gravity, the charge of an electron, and the other 36 laws and constants could evolve or change. He posits that universes that did not produce all of these 36 laws as a set would remain a gas, diffusing forever. He still has to explain the origin of the millions of ‘primordial eggs’ that had exploded to become millions of universes.

The Universe Popped into Existence from Nothing?

Hawking’s explanation is that, thanks to the Big Bang, “you can get a whole universe for free” because “the fantastically enormous universe of space and energy can materialize out of nothing.”[11] Thus, Hawking writes, “the universe itself, in all its mind-boggling vastness and complexity, could simply have popped into existence . . . [and] we do not need a God to set it up so that the Big Bang could bang.”[12] The idea that nothing produced a Big Bang that can “bang” is not explained by Hawking and the other cosmologists.

Hawking rejected theism because, he concluded, a “God” is not required to explain the existence of either the universe or life. It can appear on its own from nothing. However, the idea that the universe just “popped into existence” is not science and is not even a possible explanation, given the first law of thermodynamics which states: “energy cannot be created or destroyed; the total amount of energy in the Universe is fixed. Energy can be transformed from one form to another, or transferred from one place to another, but the total energy must remain unchanged.”[13]

Summary

Hawking’s musings illustrate the fact that attempts to get around the intelligent design of the universe require metaphysical speculations that negate much of the scientific discovery that has taken place during the last two centuries. His attempt to avoid intelligent design actually points to its superiority. In his view, everything evolves; life, the universe, and even the laws of physics. Hawking leaves the purview of science in his creative, but pathetic, attempts to explain the origin of the privileged Planet Earth by Darwinism.

References

[1] Stephen Hawking’s parting gift. New Scientist, 24 March 2023, p. 5;  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0262407923004967.

[2] Stephen Hawking. 1988. A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, New York, New York, pp. 7, 25.

[3] Hertog, Thomas. Why is the universe just right for life? New Scientist 3431:39, 25 March 2023, p. 25. The online article on The New Scientist website with the same title but different content was written by Richard Webb. See https://www.newscientist.com/article/0-why-is-the-universe-just-right-for-life-blame-the-multiverse/.

[4] Stephen Hawking’s parting gift. New Scientist, 24 March 2023, p. 5.

[5] Hertog, Thomas. 2023. Why is the universe just right for life? New Scientist 3431:3431:39. March 25, p. 39.

[6] Bergman, Jerry. The Earth:  Unique in All the Universe.”  Impact, No. 4, June 1985.  (Revised and reprinted as Earth in Space.”  in The New Creation.  Jl-Aug 1995 Vol. 56 No. 7-8, p. 13-14, 22.

[7] Hertog, 2023, p. 39.

[8] Hertog, 2023, p. 39.

[9] Hertog, 2023, p. 39.

[10] “Universe.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe, 23 March 2023.

[11] Hawking, Stephen. Brief Answers to the Big Questions. Bantam Books, New York, New York, 2018, pp. 31-32.

[12] Hawking, 2018, p. 34.

[13] Forinash II, Kyle. Energy Conservation and the First Law of Thermodynamics. Morgan & Claypool Publishers, San Rafael, California, 2017.

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Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,300 publications in 12 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.