Reply to Jorg
James Redford
In general relativity, singularities are unavoidable with realistic
energy conditions (i.e., given any universe with matter that can
contain life): as the Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems proved that
according to general relativity the universe began in the Big Bang
singularity (see, e.g., S. W. Hawking and R. Penrose, "The
Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology", Proceedings of
the Royal Society of London A, Vol. 314, No. 1519 [January 27, 1970],
pp. 529-548).
General relativity has been confirmed by every experiment condicted to
date. Whereas string theory has no experimental support whatsoever.
String theory violates general relativity, because in string theory
singularities cannot occur, as the hypothesized fundamental strings
cannot wrap themselves up into a singularity.
You are correct that a number of physicists don't want singularities
to exist.
Unfortunately, most modern physicists have been all too willing to
abandon the laws of physics if it produces results that they're
uncomfortable with, i.e., in reference to religion. It's the
antagonism for religion on the part of the scientific community which
greatly held up the acceptance of the Big Bang (for some 40 years),
due to said scientific community's displeasure with it confirming the
traditional theological position of creatio ex nihilo, and also
because no laws of physics can apply to the singularity itself (i.e.,
quite literally, the singularity is supernatural, in the sense that no
form of physics can apply to it, since physical values are at infinity
at the singularity, and so it is not possible to perform the
arithmetical operations of addition or subtraction on them; and in the
sense that the singularity is beyond creation, as it is not a part of
spacetime, but rather is the boundary of space and time).
The originator of the Big Bang theory, circa 1930, was Roman Catholic
priest and physicist Prof. Georges Lema�tre; and it was
enthusiastically endorsed by Pope Pius XII in 1951, long before the
scientific community finally came to accept it.
Rabbi Moses Maimonides and Saint Thomas Aquinas, from their readings
of biblical scripture, had both defined God as the Uncaused First
Cause (which is equivalent to Aristotle's conception of God as the
Unmoved Mover), and so the physics community was quite reluctant to
confirm with the Big Bang that God exists per this traditional
definition of God.
As regards physicists abandoning physical law due to their theological
discomfort with the Big Bang, in an article by physicist and
mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler he gives the following example
involving no less than physicist Prof. Steven Weinberg:
""
The most radical ideas are those that are perceived to support
religion, specifically Judaism and Christianity. When I was a student
at MIT in the late 1960s, I audited a course in cosmology from the
physics Nobelist Steven Weinberg. He told his class that of the
theories of cosmology, he preferred the Steady State Theory because
"it *least* resembled the account in Genesis" (my emphasis). In his
book *The First Three Minutes* (chapter 6), Weinberg explains his
earlier rejection of the Big Bang Theory: "Our mistake is not that we
take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them
seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and
equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real
world. *Even worse, there often seems to be a general agreement that
certain phenomena are just not fit subjects for respectable
theoretical and experimental effort.*" [My emphasis--J. R.]
... But as [Weinberg] himself points out in his book, the Big Bang
Theory was an automatic consequence of standard thermodynamics,
standard gravity theory, and standard nuclear physics. All of the
basic physics one needs for the Big Bang Theory was well established
in the 1930s, some two decades before the theory was worked out.
Weinberg rejected this standard physics not because he didn't take the
equations of physics seriously, but because he did not like the
religious implications of the laws of physics. ...
""
For that and a number of other such examples, see:
Frank J. Tipler, "Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce
Orthodoxy?", Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design (PCID),
Vols. 2.1 and 2.2 (January-June 2003).
http://www.iscid.org/papers/Tipler_PeerReview_070103.pdf Also
published as Chapter 7 in Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find
Darwinism Unconvincing, edited by William A. Dembski, "Foreword" by
John Wilson (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2004).
Prof. Stephen Hawking reinforces what Weinberg and Tipler wrote about
concerning the antagonism of the scientific community for religion,
resulting in them abandoning good physics. In his book The Illustrated
A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1996), p. 62, Hawking
wrote:
""
Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably
because it smacks of divine intervention. (The Catholic Church, on the
other hand, seized on the big bang model and in 1951 officially
pronounced it to be in accordance with the Bible). There were
therefore a number of attempts to avoid the conclusion that there had
been a big bang.
""
On p. 179 of the same book, Hawking wrote "In real time, the universe
has a beginning and an end at singularities that form a boundary to
spacetime and at which the laws of science break down."
Agnostic and physicist Dr. Robert Jastrow, founding director of NASA's
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote in his book God and the
Astronomers (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978), p. 113:
""
This religious faith of the scientist [that there is no First Cause]
is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under
conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a
product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that
happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the
implications, he would be traumatized.
""
For more quotes by Robert Jastrow on this, see:
"Science and Discomfiting Discoveries" in John Ross Schroeder, Bill
Bradford and Mario Seiglie, Life's Ultimate Question: Does God Exist?
(United Church of God, 2000).
http://www.ucg.org/booklets/GE/science-discovery.asp ,
http://www.gnmagazine.org/booklets/GE/GE.pdf
For more quotes by scientists along the above lines, see the below
article:
Mariano, "In the Beginning ... Cosmology, Part I", Atheism is Dead,
February 11, 2009.
http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2009/02/in-beginning-cosmology-part-i-pre-big.html
Again, the only way to avoid the Omega Point cosmology is to resort to
physical theories which have no experimental support and which violate
the known laws of physics, such as with Prof. Stephen Hawking's paper
on the black hole information issue which is dependent on the
conjectured string theory-based anti-de Sitter space/conformal field
theory correspondence (AdS/CFT correspondence). See S. W. Hawking,
"Information loss in black holes", Physical Review D, Vol. 72, No. 8
(October 2005), Art. No. 084013; also at arXiv:hep-th/0507171, July
18, 2005. http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0507171
That is, Prof. Hawking's paper is based upon empirically unconfirmed
physics which violate the known laws of physics. It's an impressive
testament to the Omega Point Theory's correctness, as Hawking
implicitly confirms that the known laws of physics require the
universe to collapse in finite time. Hawking realizes that the black
hole information issue must be resolved without violating unitarity,
yet he's forced to abandon the known laws of physics in order to avoid
unitarity violation without the universe collapsing.
Contrast that ad libitum approach to doing physics with that of Prof.
Frank J. Tipler, who bases his Omega Point/Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg
quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) strictly on
the known laws of physics. Tipler believes we have to take the known
laws of physics seriously as true explanations of how the world works,
unless said physics are experimentally, or otherwise, refuted.
----------------------------------------
James Redford, author of "Jesus Is an Anarchist", Social Science
Research Network (SSRN), revised and expanded edition, October 17,
2009 (originally published December 19, 2001)
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1337761 ,
http://theophysics.chimehost.net/anarchist-jesus.pdf ,
http://theophysics.ifastnet.com/anarchist-jesus.html
Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist (a website with information
on Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theory and the quantum gravity
Theory of Everything [TOE]) http://theophysics.chimehost.net ,
http://theophysics.host56.com