Black Holes In A Brief History

Preface

I and millions of readers without a scientific education were delighted when Stephen Hawking published A Brief History of Time. Its purpose was to give us an insight into how science, cosmologist especially, tackle the questions that are of interest to us all,where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end, and if so, how? The insight he imparted opened questions about Hawking’s own methods and conclusions: were they shared by most cosmologists? Did they adequately answer the questions the book was written to address? In both cases, no. In A Brief History, Hawking presents to the general public his own no boundary theory which most cosmologist do not espouse. And of the things which Hawking does share with other cosmologist, neither he nor they can answer the questions he poses. Black Holes in A Brief History demonstrates that in fact his no boundary theory is but another failed attempt to do so. In this case sciences failure rings a note of hope rather than of dispair. The most prominant cosmologists see the universe as pointless and we, as Hawking maintains, as insignificant creatures who accidentally inhabit it. On the brighter side, sciences successes in medicine, energy, comunication, biology, water purification, transportation and on and on sound a peal of hope that makes of current cosmology little more than entertainment. Long before formal science existed, religions struggled with the same questions of where the universe came from and how and why, and if it will end and, if so, how, and shared with science the same failure rate. In addition, religion was dogged by another, more important question: can a good, all powerful god design an evil world? These are the questions Black Holes in A Brief History deals with, also dogged by another: Is there any hope to be found in such a morass of failure?

Part One

Introduction

Infinitely Small Universe, Smaller Dice

Burningly it came on me all at once.

This was the place!

Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

Abandon a faith that abhors science. But if your newfound science won’t abide faith you’ve left one narrow minded path to follow another. It’s possible to delight in both, but it isn’t easy. Shelves sag with exciting books written for laymen like me, about how the universe began and functions–cosmology and physics, but most are written by scientist who won’t tolerate faith and thrill to say so. It’s a heavy obligation to show that in their contra-religious mentality these scientists are narrowminded. Heavier still for a layman like me--I was a roughneck most of my life, sweating and freezing night and day, summer, winter on an oil drilling rig, making some oilman rich. We Starks were an uneducated lot, vagabond oilfield laborers who arrived in California from Oklahoma in nineteen-fort-one. Only I, of four brothers and three sisters, ever finished high school. I stayed only because of sports. Even then, I’m less an athlete than most in my family. Less financially successful than most of them, too. So if I’m dwarfed by my seven self-educated siblings, I’m a fool to take on scientists of Stephen Hawking’s ilk.

Why pick on Hawking?

Please. I can’t pick on Hawking. I agree with most of what he says that I have sense enough to understand. Much of it I don’t understand and have no reason to object to. Only in those few areas where Hawking attacks needlessly (and after at least twenty years, fruitlessly) humanity’s hopes for meaning do I feel compelled to risk my considerable self esteem. His books are enormously popular and his ideas influential. So if I’m going to make a fool of myself trying to defeat the message that ours is an accidental universe, devoid of meaning beyond what physics describes in theory and mathematics, why not at the expense of someone who is most influential there, someone whose rich intellect can best afford it?

And a fool I am. Fool enough to hope that some young person reads my story and goes early where, late, I wish I had gone. Or that my story will allay the fears of someone who yearns to know how the universe began and functions but is afraid his faith won’t survive the investigation. Oh, that mine had been one long journey of faith and science that began with deliberation and, as with a Robert Frost poem, assume(d) direction with the first line laid down. That I could reflect on a body of work like that of Arthur Koestler or Graham Greene, then top it off with something of an autobiography describing the road I had traveled. Had I talent enough and time...but I’m short of both. I do have a perspective on life denied Koestler or Greene–I view reality through the lens of an undistinguished education. Should I have contemplated suicide, as Graham Greene did, it could never have been on the Oxford campus that I put the pistol to my head. Only by the good grace and long suffering of York College did I ever set foot on a college campus, and then, nineteen-fifty-six, only because the new school needed students lest it be a campus with teachers and no students. They scoured the continent and came up with some surprisingly brilliant students, and me. I went because they allowed me to and because I detested going back on that oily drilling rig. And while I would never have had the courage to put a pistol to my own head, I’m sure there were several of my teachers who would like to have.

Why do I rake up all this oilfield trash? To emphasize that if physics and cosmology excite a man like me because they illustrate design in the universe, they can excite you, and should. If you follow the logic of those many science books that sag the shelves, and not their illogical prejudices against design, you’ll enjoy the splendor of science and remain as convinced as I am that the evidence for design in the universe is, if not unassailable, compelling.

Nothing rewards like love. It’s its own reason to exist. The same goes for wonder. Love and wonder are what humans are made for. But when one is confronted with evidence that makes him suspect that all he has had faith in is fantasy, then wonder turns to despair. That happened to me when first I peered through a microscope at fossils washed to surface from the bottom of a ten-thousand foot oil well. There was no more hiding of the facts from what little faith remained after a lifetime of sheltering it. No chance of holding Galileo in house arrest. I knew that the earth was no longer the center of the universe, that fossils existed older than Noah’s flood, that fifteen-billion years ago the universe deployed in what we call the big bang. No Grand Inquisitor in my lifetime could stifle that knowledge. One follows for years a weak faith that allows only a biblical interpretation of the physical universe until one day he suspects that he is arguing more with God’s evidence than with the scientists who interpret it. Better, engage the evidence early. Ah, there’s the rub; the rules for engaging God through his physical evidence are the same as those for engaging him in meditation–ask honest questions, accept honest answers and prepare to have your perspective changed forever.

There was no point at the end of my wandering where faith suddenly stepped forward like the priests bearing the ark of the covenant, their feet striking the flowing waters of the Jordan and halting it and Joshua leading the children of Israel into the promised land. Mine was a journey like Child Roland To The Dark Tower Came. I was not sure I was even on a quest, I had wandered aimlessly so long. Burningly it came on me all at once. This was the place, and I was dauntless before the dark tower. But I was a battered old man at the end of a quest I began as a boy. I had not conquered fear; somewhere on the long journey fear became disinterested in me, shrugged his shoulders and walked away. Go early into science, it will alter your faith, but if this book is successful it won’t destroy it.

What this book won’t do: It won’t change–does not attempt to change–people whose tragic experiences in life have robbed them of faith–If there were a God, how could He have let such an evil thing happen? I have nothing but compassion for such people. Not pity, compassion. God’s existence is not contingent upon our belief in him, nor is he good or evil because we think he is or is not. If God is good and someone rejects him because their experience in his creation has been tragic and they can’t believe that a good God would allow such bad things to happen, then their reasons for rejecting God as evil are good reasons. If God exists and is good, he thrives in such doubts. But it is the good that drives these doubts. It is not scientific observation and mathematical calculations. This book is zeroed in on scientific and mathematical calculations aimed to dissuade people from believing in design in the universe. Physical things are neither good nor evil, and physical existence is the study of physics. Scientists who argue that it is impossible that a good god could have created a world riddled with evil should frame their logic in theological or ethical proofs, not scientific ones.

But this book is not about religion poking holes in science, it is about logic poking holes in the non-scientific claim against design in the universe. I’m convinced that the universe was designed. Why it was designed as it is, and why there is evil in it, I do not know. The tsunami in south Asia, the day after Christmas, two-thousand-four, left me shaking my fist at the heavens one moment and perplexed the next at why a lotus eater like me, who flees catastrophe, is privileged to share the same planet with others who rush to it risking their lives to bring relief; and others who voluntarily leave the wealth and comfort I avidly pursue, to live in squalor so as to make life less miserable for those who can’t escape it. When in this book I reason from first cause, which has traditionally been called God, it is not because I aim to sell anyone on religion, I am not associated with organized religion and have nothing to sell. I am grateful that mine is a rich niche in time and place, a paradisaical time warp in man’s usual fare of famine, disease, war and death. I cannot show you how a path back to the beginning will put you at the feet of a beneficent First Cause of creation. But as I follow logic back to the big bang it leads inevitably to the yawning question of First Cause and before I know it I have fallen in and can no more escape than if it were a black hole.

Part One

Chapter 1

Infinite Fear, Infinite Regress

...the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from (man) in an impenetrable secret: he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up.

Blaise Pascal, Thoughts

Standing aquiver beside my desk, I was a biblical fundamentalist of the strictest order confronting a teacher who was describing how life began and evolved to what we see today.

Where did the water that the amoeba formed in come from? I asked.

The earth’s gravity drew oxygen and hydrogen to it and these mixed and became water.

Where did the earth that drew the oxygen and hydrogen come from?

It began as a gaseous cloud that got closer and closer together until it began to form into a solid.

Where did the gaseous cloud come from? And so on, an infinite regress.

Sit down, Donald, I am your teacher, you are not mine.

She was, and would have been the following year had my family not followed the old drilling rig from the gas fields of Rio Vista, California to an oil well two-hundred miles south at Greenfield and spared me the embarrassment of having to repeat her class. But there was more afoot in the world of science in nineteen-fifty than a seventh grade teacher trying to sort out how a failing student had got her in an infinite regress--Einstein was in search of a unified theory, a theory that would explain everything. I had no knowledge of Einstein’s search in those days, little of Einstein. I could not have understood the first thing about a unified theory if it were explained to me. Nor had I the slightest formal concept of such a thing as an infinite regress. But I knew what infinite fear was. I was silently terrified that one day science would arrive at an explanation for everything and it wouldn’t be God. That fear dogged me for