Victor J. Stenger

Einstein had inserted into his gravitational equation a factor called the cosmological constant that provided a repulsive force to counteract the gravitational attraction that otherwise would make the universe collapse. Although the cosmological constant is often referred to as a “fudge factor,” that is a misnomer. Such a constant is required in Einstein’s equation, although no value is given for it. If positive, it produces a gravitational repulsion. If negative, we have an attraction added to that of normal gravity.

In the early 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble, working at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, discovered that many of the diffuse objects in the sky called nebulae were in fact distant galaxies. The universe extended well beyond our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Later in the decade, Hubble and his assistant Milton L. Humason estimated the distances to galaxies using a technique invented by Henrietta Swan. This they combined with measurements of the redshifts of the spectral lines from stars in the galaxies that had been measured by Vesto Sipher.

The light emitted from a high-temperature gas is characterized by “spectral lines” of well-defined frequencies. Different gases have different spectra. By observing the spectra of light from stars, astronomers are able to decipher the composition of the surface of the star. The element helium was observed this way in the sun before it was discovered on Earth. When a spectral line is shifted to lower frequency it is called a redshift. When it is shifted to a higher frequency, we have a blueshift.

Hubble and Humason showed that the galaxies were generally redshifted and so were, on average, receding from us. They found that the amount of redshift from a galaxy was roughly proportional to its distance from us, although there was a lot of scatter in the data points.

Lemaître provided an explanation consistent with Einstein’s equation: the universe is expanding, so as time goes by the galaxies are moving, again on average, away from us. The observed redshift is the Doppler effect that results from their recessional speeds. Hubble’s result showed that the galaxies were moving away from one another as if from a giant explosion, where those galaxies with higher speeds have moved the farthest apart. This became know as the big bang.

When Einstein realized that the cosmological constant was not needed to agree with observations, he called it his “biggest blunder.” For many years the cosmological constant was assumed to be zero, however, no theoretical reason has yet been found for this assumption.

In the meantime, the cosmological constant has resurfaced. In 1980 it was put forward as a candidate for the repulsive force that produced the enormous exponential expansion, called inflation, that the universe apparently underwent during its earliest moments. More recently, the cosmological constant has been proposed for the repulsive dark energy that is responsible for the acceleration of the universe’s expansion discovered in 1998.

In Einstein’s gravitational equation, the cosmological constant is equivalent to an energy density in a vacuum, that is, a space devoid of matter. By equating this density to the density of the zero point energy that is left in a volume after you remove all its particles, you obtain a number that is 120 orders of magnitude higher than what is observed. Such a high value would result in a universe that would so rapidly inflate that galaxies would have no time to form. This is the problem with the cosmological constant.

The cosmological constant problem is used by theists as the prime example of the fine-tuning of the universe that they claim as evidence for God. However, cosmologist Don Page, an evangelical Christian, has pointed out that the apparent positive value of the cosmological constant is somewhat inimical to life because its repulsion acts against the gravitational attraction needed to form galaxies. If God fine-tuned the universe for life he would have made the cosmological constant slightly negative.

Physicist Leonard Susskind calls the problem with the cosmological constant “the mother of all physics problems” and “the worst prediction ever.” The currently favored solution to the problem among physicists is called the “multiverse” in which our universe is just one of a great many others having a wide variation of values for the cosmological constant as well as other physics parameters. We happen to live in the universe suitable for us. Susskind notes that string theory has some 10500 possible solutions, each of which could correspond to a separate universe within the multiverse.

While I have nothing against the multiverse theory, my view is that the cosmological constant calculation is so obviously wrong that it can be ignored. While physicists have not yet reached a consensus on the correct calculation, one possibility that agrees with observations is called the holographic principle.

The calculation of the vacuum energy density of the universe involves a sum over all the zero-point energy states in the universe. The “worst prediction ever” assumed that the number of states is proportional to the volume, but now there is reason to believe that this is wrong. The holographic principle asserts that the number of states in a volume is proportional to the surface area of that volume, as in the case of a black hole. The universe can have no more states than that of a black hole of the same size. The energy density calculated from this assumption is of the same order of magnitude as the vacuum energy density that is determined from observations. Even if this is not the actual source of the dark energy, we can say that the calculation giving a 120-orders-of-magnitude discrepancy is almost certainly wrong.

So, the fine-tuning of the cosmological constant is another God-of-the-gaps argument in which the gap is being filled in by some purely natural mortar.

One such religious notion is the story of creation: once upon a time there was nothing, and then, miraculously, there was something. But is that the only possibility? Why couldn’t there always have been something? If there never was a transition from nothing to something, it follows that there was no creation and, therefore, no creator—personal or otherwise.

Of course, creation ex nihilo (the creation of the universe out of nothing) is a major component of virtually all religions. On the other hand, modern cosmology suggests that the universe was not created but rather is eternal in time.

Theologians, theist authors, and theist debaters have developed several arguments that they maintain prove that the universe can’t be eternal, that it had to have a beginning. I will start with the frequently heard claim that an eternal universe can’t exist for mathematical reasons. The argument made is that in an infinite universe it would take an infinite amount of time to reach the present from the beginning.

However, this is a straw man argument that exploits the fact that most scientists as well as laypeople improperly use the word infinite when they really mean endless or unlimited. An eternal universe is not the same as an infinite universe. Time is the number of ticks on a clock. In the eternal universe, that number is endless, not infinite. Counting backward in time, the eternal universe has no beginning—not a beginning that was an infinite time ago. The time interval from any moment in the past to the present is finite. So an eternal universe is mathematically possible.

The second argument for a cosmic creation that theologians and Christian apologists have been using for decades now is that the universe, and time itself, began with a singularity identified with the big bang. This singularity is a point in space-time of unlimited density. This claim is based on a theorem derived from Einstein’s general relativity that was published by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose in 1970.

It has now been over twenty years since Hawking and Penrose admitted that there was no singularity. Their calculation, while not wrong as far as it went, had not taken into account quantum mechanics (see page 50 of Hawking’s 1988 bestseller A Brief History of Time). I do not know of a single working cosmologist today who says that the universe began with a singularity.

Some Christian authors and debaters also refer to other more recent calculations they claim require the universe to have a beginning. To give the shortest possible rebuttal, I will just quote the Caltech cosmologist Sean Carroll, who wrote to me in an e-mail: “No result derived on the basis of classical general relativity can be used to derive anything truly fundamental, since classical general relativity isn’t right. You need to quantize gravity.”

So the universe need not have had a beginning. But let’s suppose for a moment that it did. That fact alone would not prove it was purposefully created. Another premise must be made to show that. The assumption must be added that everything that begins has a cause. Once again, this ignores quantum mechanics, in which events commonly occur without cause. This is the case for the atomic transitions that give us light and the nuclear decays that give us nuclear radiation. They all happen spontaneously, without cause. In short, all attempts to prove that the universe had to have a beginning caused by God fail on several fronts.

The third creationist argument, called the anthropic cosmological principle, is made by a whole army of Christian theologians and authors. It is the claim that the universe is fine-tuned for life—in particular, human life. Here the story is even more complicated because several notable physicists think such fine-tuning does exist, although they attribute it to natural causes rather than a creator god. I identify with an opposition group of physicists who see no need to invoke the anthropic principle at all. We can offer natural explanations for all the values of all parameters claimed to be fine-tuned (see my book The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning, in press).

The claims that evidence for a cosmic creation can be found in physical observations are based on a gross misunderstanding of basic physics. Several theist authors have carelessly lifted out of context the following quotation from Hawking’s A Brief History of Time:

If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have collapsed before it ever reached its present size. (pp. 121–22)

This is presented as an example of the incredible fine-tuning of the universe. However, those making this claim ignore Hawking’s explanation (seven pages later) for why no fine-tuning was needed. There he describes the inflationary cosmological model, in which the universe began with a tiny period of very rapid, exponential expansion. While still new in 1988, inflationary cosmology is now well established. Hawking writes,

[In the inflationary model] the rate of expansion of the universe would automatically become very close to the critical rate determined by the energy density of the universe. This could then explain why the rate of expansion is still so close to the critical rate, without having to assume that the initial rate of expansion of the universe was very carefully chosen. (p. 128)

So the rate of expansion of the universe is not fine-tuned at all. Its value is exactly what it should be.

This is only one of the thirty or so parameters that theists claim were fine-tuned by God. Reasonable explanations based on known physics and cosmology can be given for them all. Computer simulations show that some kind of life is possible in universes over a wide range of parameters.

The erroneous claims I have discussed here are widely disseminated in Christian literature and appear frequently in debates and discussions on religion and science. They are rarely challenged by scientists who have the necessary technical knowledge required to discern the validity of arguments based on mathematics, physics, or cosmology. Instead these scientists choose to remain outside the fray. The unwillingness of most scientists to engage in the very real war between science and religion is handing victory to religion by default.

This column is adapted from an article that appeared in the Huffington Post, where Victor Stenger is now a regular blogger. His tenth book, now in press and scheduled to be available in April 2011, is The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: How the Universe Is Not Designed for Us (Prometheus Books).

In his recent book Life After Death: The Evidence (2009), conservative author Dinesh D’Souza provides several arguments for evidence of life after death, some of which I had not heard before. Here I will give a short summary with some responses.

Near-Death Experiences

D’Souza claims that near-death experiences (NDE) suggest that consciousness can outlive the breakdown of the body, and they cannot be explained as the product of dying brains. The same experiences, which have all the characteristics of hallucinations caused by oxygen deprivation, can be found in situations in which a subject is not near death. Despite thousands of cases, no one has ever come back from an NDE with information that could not have been in their heads originally.

Past-Life Memories

D’Souza is properly skeptical of the work of the late Ian Stevenson, psychiatrist and professor at the University of Virginia. Stevenson collected thousands of cases of children recalling details from past lives, mostly in India and other cultures that believe in reincarnation. Independent investigations indicated that the children could have known about the people they claimed to be in a previous life, who were usually from the same or nearby villages.

Why would children make up such stories? Many were motivated to improve their status in society, for example, to show they belong in a higher caste. Or they desired to become religious celebrities, a common occurrence in India, D’Souza points out, for children who appear especially anointed. Independent analyses of Stevenson’s data by experts did not find a single case with convincing evidence of reincarnation.

Modern Physics

D’Souza claims that modern physics shows that matter exists that is “radically different from any matter we are familiar with.” I assume he is referring to the so-called “dark matter” and “dark energy.” While it is true that we do not yet know their exact natures, they exhibit those properties of inertia and gravitation that define what we * mean by “matter” and exhibit nothing that might be called “spiritual.” Furthermore, plausible candidates exist for these forms of matter within the current standard models of physics and cosmology.

Cosmology

D’Souza mentions the possibility suggested by modern cosmology that multiple universes exist that could have different natural laws than ours—and proposes that perhaps we can live beyond death in one of those realms. While these universes may have different laws, they are still made of matter and therefore none is a candidate for a world of pure spirit.

Modern Biology

D’Souza claims that modern biology shows that the “evolutionary transition from matter to mind does not seem random or accidental but built into the script of nature.” He wishfully interprets this as a transition from material to immaterial. First, this view is far from the mainstream of modern biology, and it is held by a small minority of biologists who allow their religious faith to intrude on their science. Second, even if they are right about some previously unrecognized teleological principle in action, there is no basis for concluding that it is not purely material.

Neuroscience

D’Souza claims that neuroscience has shown that the “mind cannot be reduced to the brain and materialism is at a dead end.” He has misinformed his readers about the facts. The number of active neuroscientists today who are mind-body dualists probably can be counted on the fingers of one hand. He claims that consciousness and free will seem to operate outside the domain of objective science. In fact, considerable research exists suggesting exactly the opposite conclusion. Models of purely material consciousness have reached the state where they are being tested in the laboratory with a whole array of wonderful new tools. These models are already finding practical applications in helping people with brain disorders.

Morality

D’Souza argues, “morality is best understood under the presupposition that there is cosmic justice beyond the world.” Evolution, he says, cannot explain morality since it is based in selfishness, the opposite of morality. Morality rises above self-interest but not “gene-interest,” as Richard Dawkins famously explained in The Selfish Gene.

D’Souza claims that morality must come from somewhere outside the evolution-dominated material world. But then he tells us that people are moral because they expect to be rewarded in the afterlife. So it’s self-interest after all! Except if you are an atheist and don’t believe in an afterlife, in which case you have no reason to be moral. Thus D’Souza’s model predicts that believers in the afterlife will be far more moral than nonbelievers. What do the data say? They indicate quite the contrary—that atheists are, if anything, somewhat more moral than theists. And unlike theists, their morality does rise above self-interest. Thus D’Souza’s hypothesis is falsified by the data and can hardly be put forth as a case for the existence of an afterlife.

Practical Reason

Finally, D’Souza tries to convince us that belief in the afterlife is good for us and good for society. He claims that these beliefs, in particular those of Christianity, provide the core foundation of everything we hold dear in society: equality, human dignity, democracy, human rights, and even peace and compassion. But he does not show us where in Christianity these values can be found. They are certainly not in the scriptures. They can’t be found in the history of Christianity. In fact, they can be found in societies that predate Christianity. Indeed, one might wonder why they took so long to take hold in our modern society when they have been around for thousands of years. Could the reason be that there was a period of about 1,000 years, from roughly 500 to 1500, when Christianity ruled Europe and much of the progress of previous centuries ground to a halt?

In 1953 the famous astronomer Fred Hoyle calculated that the production of carbon would not occur with sufficient probability unless that probability was boosted by the presence of an excited nuclear state of C12 at about 7.7 MeV. In what appeared to be a remarkable victory for anthropic reasoning, the existence of such a state was quickly confirmed experimentally. Anthropic reasoning is inferring that some property of nature must exist for life, as we know it, to be possible. The Hoyle prediction has been regarded by theists and others as a miraculous example of the fine-tuning of the constants of physics needed to make life possible. As Hoyle, a professed atheist, remarked:

A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.

You will find the Hoyle resonance, us­ually accompanied by the above quotation, prominently included in every discussion about fine-tuning. Let us examine the scientific facts in more detail.

Fig. 1(a) shows two energy levels: (1) the amount by which the total rest energy of Be8 + He4 exceeds that of C12, which is 7.3367 MeV; (2) the excited state of C12 predicted by Hoyle and observed at 7.656 MeV. Note that Hoyle did not predict this value exactly but estimated that the energy level should be around 7.7 MeV.

Now it is often claimed that this excited state has to be fine-tuned to precisely this value in order for carbon-based life to exist. This is not true. Life might be possible over a range of carbon abundances.

In 1989 Mario Livio and his collaborators performed calculations to test the sensitivity of stellar nucleosynthesis to the exact position of the ob­served C12 ex­cited state. They de­termined that a 0.06 MeV increase in the location of the level to 7.716 MeV would not significantly alter the carbon production in stellar environments. A de­crease by the same amount to 7.596 MeV was needed before the carbon production in­creased significantly above its value in our universe. This range is shown in Fig. 1(b). Already we can see the excited state is not very fine-tuned.

Finally, we note that the problem is not to obtain the exact amount of carbon in our universe but just sufficient carbon production for life. We get more carbon when the Hoyle energy level is even lower. Further­more, Livio et al. showed that the energy level can be increased by as much as 0.277 MeV to 7.933 MeV before insufficient carbon is produced. As Fig. 1(c) shows, an excited state anywhere from this energy down to near the minimum energy would produce adequate carbon. In short, no fine-tuning was necessary to produce sufficient carbon in stars for life as we know it to be possible. While nuclear theorists are unable to calculate the precise energy level of the Hoyle resonance, they know enough about how the carbon nucleus is formed to show that a resonance in the allowed region is very likely.

Further Reading

F. Hoyle, et al., “A State in C12 Predicted From Astro­nomical Evidence,” Physical Review Let­ters 92 (1953): 1096.

M. Livio, et al., “The Anthropic Significance of the Existence of an Excited State of C12,” Nature 340 (1989): 281–86.

Alejandro Jenkins and Gilad Perez, “Looking for Life in the Multiverse: Universes with Different Physical Laws Might Still Be Habitable,” Scien­tific American (January, 2010): 42–49.

I do not think it is fair to say that scientific naturalism ignores the subjective. While it is true that neuroscientists do not yet have an established material model of mind, they have considerable data on changes that occur in the brain during subjective mental activity. They have established beyond doubt that material processes are involved.

Nevertheless, Haught’s view seems to be the common refrain of theists arguing against a purely natural universe. In his book God Is No Delusion, Thomas Crean, a Dominican friar of the priory of St. Michael the Archangel in Cambridge, England, follows Haught in using the argument from ignorance fallacy, saying he cannot understand how thoughts could emerge from matter, and therefore they must have come from God. He asks, “How could a ‘material kind of thing’ cause an ‘immaterial kind of thing’ to exist?” Well, a computer is a material kind of thing that can solve mathematical and logical problems. It can write poetry that English professors are unable to distinguish from that written by humans. It can produce beautiful art and music. The aesthetic experiences of these products are immaterial “kinds of things,” but they result from physical brain activity.

Unaware of these facts, Crean continues in the same vein, “Materialism, then, is absurd. A thought cannot be a material thing, nor can it be caused by a material thing. The only possible conclusion is that thought as such is something independent of matter, that is, something spiritual.”

In their short book Naturalism, philosophers Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro attempt to show that naturalism is intellectually incoherent. The authors are theists who teach at Notre Dame University and St. Olaf College, respectively. They claim that a duality of the physical and the mental is necessary to explain mental causation, that is, how mental events cause physical events.

This strikes me as rather backward. If, as naturalism asserts, mental events arise from physical events in the brain, then there surely is no problem since we then have physical events causing physical events, just as when a cue ball hits an eight ball and causes it to go into a pocket. On the other hand, if mental events have their own nonphysical nature, then we have the problem of explaining how something nonphysical can cause physical events. Goetz and Taliaferro do not provide us with even a speculative model for how that can happen.

When theists such as Goetz and Taliaferro refer to gaps in the scientific record, the best they can do is say, “See, God must have done it.” This provides no more information and is less economical than the simple statement: “Nature did it.” But materialists can usually do much better than this simple assertion and give some idea of how nature did it. In a physical explanation we often have a theory, such as relativity or evolution, that provides detailed mechanisms for the events being observed. Even when we do not have an existing established theory, such as for the origin of life or mental processes, we have plausible proposals under consideration that agree with all existing knowledge and that require no supernatural elements. Theists can make only the simple assertion, “God did it.” Scientists can say, “We don’t know. But we’ll try to find out.”

Of course, mind-body dualism is a widespread “commonsense” belief among laypeople. Goetz and Taliaferro seem to think common sense is sufficient to adopt the dualist view.

Goetz and Taliaferro also claim to show the philosophical coherence of divine agency. So what if it is philosophically coherent? That says nothing about its reality. A fantasy computer game in which heroes come back to life after being killed is philosophically coherent; it wouldn’t run on a computer if it wasn’t logical. But the world is still not that way.

Philosopher Paul Churchland points out that throughout history people have expressed doubt that science will ever be able to explain some phenomena. The first-century astronomer Ptolemy (c. 85–165), the greatest astronomer of his age, said science would never be able to capture the true nature of heavenly causes because they were inaccessible. He didn’t have Newton’s inspiration that the laws of physics are universal, meaning they apply both on Earth and in the heavens. The nineteenth-century philosopher Comte (d. 1857) similarly argued that we could never know the physical constitution of stars. He didn’t know about atomic spectra. As late as the 1950s, most people were still expressing doubt that life could be explained purely materialistically and believed instead that some life force was needed. With the 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA and the great success of the theory of evolution by natural selection, science saw no need for, and indeed no evidence for, a special force of life.

When the mental dualist asks, “How can thoughtless matter give rise to thought?” he is expressing the same argument from ignorance fallacy used by those who say, “How can dead matter give rise to life?”

Many questions remain unanswered by those who claim that some immaterial spirit or soul is ultimately controlling the actions of the brain. How does this immaterial thing that carries no energy or momentum provide energy and momentum to particles in the brain? This implies violations of conservation of energy and momentum, which the theist believes are God’s laws. Why is it okay to break these laws of God and not his other laws, such as his ban on homosexual marriage and using condoms?

Further Reading

• Paul M. Churchland, The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey Into the Brain (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1995).
• Thomas Crean, God is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2007).
• Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro, Naturalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Erdman Publishing Company, 2008).
• John F. Haught, God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens (Westminster John Knox Press, 2008).

This is adapted from Stenger’s latest book, The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason (Prometheus Books 2009).

The suit contends that the collider could produce a tiny black hole or an exotic object called a “strangelet,” either of which might swallow up Earth and perhaps more.

By the time you read this, a hearing scheduled for June 16 may have settled the suit. In any case, let me give some background on what is an interesting scientific and moral question. The same issue was raised before the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) was turned on at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island last year, which took place without consequence.

Let’s take a look at the processes involved. First, any black hole that might be formed in an LHC single collision will be tiny. Since the total energy of the two beams is E=14 trillion electron-volts, using m=E/c² we calculate the mass of the black hole to be 2.4 x 10^-23 kilograms, equivalent to the mass of about 15,000 hydrogen atoms. This is far less than the theoretical minimum mass of a black hole, the Planck mass, which is 2.2 x 10^-8 kilograms.

Nevertheless, suppose such a black hole is possible. Stephen Hawking has proven that a black hole is unstable with a mean lifetime that depends on the cube of its mass. While the mean lifetime of astronomical black holes is many times the age of the universe, the LHC black hole would survive only 2 x 10^-84 seconds before disintegrating into Hawking radiation. Needless to say, this is hardly enough time to swallow up Earth.

So, there should be no problem—unless Stephen Hawking and the rest of the physics community are wrong. No one has ever seen a black hole decay, so as the creationists like to say, this is “theory and not fact.”

Strange matter is more problematic. This is a hypothetical form of matter composed not only of the usual “up” (u) and “down” (d) quarks that compose the nuclei of familiar atomic matter, but also of strange (s) quarks. The proton is udu and the neutron is udd. The Lambda hyperon (Λ), which was first seen in cosmic rays in 1947, is uds, making it an example of “strange matter.” However, because the s quark is much heavier than the u and d, the Λ is unstable and only has a mean lifetime of 2.6 x 10^-10 seconds.

It has been conjectured that strange matter may become stable when a sufficient number of quarks are brought together. This could happen because the Pauli exclusion principle favors three distinguishable quarks over protons and neutrons, each of which has two identical quarks. Estimates I have seen indicate that thousands of quarks are needed for stability, but these calculations are highly uncertain.

Where would all these quarks come from? In a high-energy collision between nuclei, a quark-gluon plasma is formed, which at the LHC energy can contain thousands of quarks and massless gluons. This may then condense into strange matter.

A strangelet is a chunk of stable strange matter. The ominous scenario is that any negatively charged strangelet coming into contact with an ordinary nucleus might convert it to strange matter, setting up a chain reaction in which Earth would eventually become a hot lump of strange matter.

The best argument against the suggested catastrophe is that cosmic ray protons of much higher energies than will be produced by the LHC have been hitting Earth and every other object in the universe for thirteen billion years, and nothing to our knowledge has converted to strange matter, or even black holes. The cosmic ray with the highest observed energy has an output of about 10²⁰ electron-volts. Assuming it is a proton, the center-of-mass energy resulting from it colliding with another proton at rest, on the Moon for example, is 4.5 x 10¹⁴ electron-volts—higher than the LHC collision energy. They have not destroyed the moon or any objects that we know about.

If strangelets are being produced, we would expect all neutron stars in the universe to be strange stars, and we have observational reasons to think they are not. On the other hand, there are a few anomalous objects that are too dense to be neutron stars but not dense enough to be black holes. Perhaps these are strangelets.

Prominent physicists, including Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek, were charged by the director of Brookhaven National Laboratory to analyze the RHIC disaster scenario. In their report published in 1999, they argued that black hole formation from RHIC is highly unlikely. Further, they pointed out that in the five-billion-year life of the moon, approximately 10²⁸ collisions of the RHIC type have occurred. The number of collisions that will occur in ten years of running RHIC, 2 x 10¹¹, is fewer than happen each day on the moon. Their conclusion: “The candidate mechanisms for catastrophe scenarios at RHIC are firmly excluded by existing empirical evidence, compelling theoretical arguments or both.”

However, reputable physicist Adrian Kent has questioned whether a proper risk assessment was done before proceeding with RHIC. The empirical data alone imply a catastrophic probability of about 10^-17.

Only by relying on theory does the risk approach zero. As Kent puts it, “When the destruction of the Earth is in question . . . it would be preferable not to have to rely on theoretical expectations alone.”

Still, I’m taking bets that it won’t happen.

Penrose was met with considerable skepticism, especially in the artificial intelligence community, which he was basically attempting to put out of business, and also among physicists who could not see what quantum gravity could possibly have to do with a large, hot structure such as the brain.

Penrose then teamed up with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff in proposing a model for how quantum mechanics operates in the brain. Here’s how they explain it:

According to the principles of OR [objective reduction, proposed by Penrose in his 1994 book Shadows of the Mind], superpositioned states each have their own space-time geometries. When the degree of coherent mass-energy difference leads to a sufficient separation of space-time geometry, the system must choose and decay (reduce, collapse) to a single universe state, thus preventing “multiple universes.” In this way, a transient superposition of slightly differing space-time geometries persists until an abrupt quantum classical reduction occurs and one or the other is chosen. Thus consciousness may involve self-perturbations of space-time geometry.

Hameroff was one of the subjects interviewed in the 2004 independent documentary film What the Bleep Do We Know? That film, along with the succeeding 2005 film and still-bestselling book The Secret, exploited the notion that quantum mechanics tells us we make our own reality (see Reality Check September 2007).

In his Scientific American column of January 2005, Michael Shermer gave Bleep a scathing review. Referring to the Penrose-Hameroff model, Shermer references my 1995 book The Unconscious Quantum that discusses their proposal in some detail as well as the general question of whether the brain is a quantum device. In particular, Shermer pointed to a criterion I applied for determining whether a system must be described by quantum mechanics: If the product of a typical mass (m), speed (v), and distance (d) for the particles of the system is on the order of Planck’s constant (h) or less, then you cannot use classical mechanics to describe it but must use quantum mechanics.

Applying the criterion to the brain, I used the typical mass of a neural transmitter molecule, its speed-based thermal motion, and the distance across the synapse to find mvd about two orders of magnitude too large for quantum effects to be necessarily present.

In a letter responding to Shermer’s column, Hameroff wrote:

To debunk our theory Shermer cites an assertion in a book by Victor Stenger that the product of mass, velocity and distance of a quantum system cannot exceed Planck’s constant. I’ve not seen this proposal in a peer reviewed journal, nor listed anywhere as a serious interpretation of quantum mechanics. But in any case Stenger’s assertion is disproven by Anton Zeilinger’s experimental demonstration of quantum wave behavior in fullerenes and biological porphyrin proteins. (Skepticism should cut both ways, Mr. Shermer.) Nonetheless I agree with Stenger that synaptic chemical transmission between neurons is completely classical. The quantum computations we propose are isolated in microtubules within neurons. Classical neurotransmission provides inputs to, and outputs from, microtubule quantum computations mediating consciousness in neuronal dendrites.

First of all, the criterion I proposed is based on textbook quantum mechanics, originating with Niels Bohr in 1913—hardly in need of peer review. Second, I present this as a criterion for the necessary use of quantum mechanics in which you cannot get away with using classical mechanics. I did note that macroscopic quantum systems such as lasers and superconductors exist. They rely on the phenomenon of quantum coherence that can act over large distances.

In any case, Hameroff admits he agrees with me on my conclusion that “synaptic chemical transmission between neurons is completely classical.” He says he and Penrose propose that the quantum effects occur in microtubules within neurons. Microtubules are hollow, cylindrical polymers that are part of the cytoskeleton of all cells. As I noted in my book, I am puzzled that the quantum effects described in this model happen only with brain cells and not, say, the cells of the big toe.

In a 1999 paper, physicist max Tegmark looked at the problem of quantum coherence in the brain and determined that the decoherence timescales would be ten or more orders of magnitude shorter than the timescales for an event in the brain. The brain is simply too large and too hot to be a quantum device, coherent or not.

It is safe to say that the Penrose-Hameroff model has not been supported by the evidence to the satisfaction of the great majority of neuroscientists. However, let us assume Penrose is right about the brain not being a strict algorithmic computer. A simple mechanism exists, well known to complexity theorists, that can enable the brain or an electronic circuit to act in a noncomputable way.

External sources in the environment such as cosmic rays or internal sources such as radioactive potassium (K40) in blood can be expected to induce fluctuations in brain currents. These processes are quantum in origin, which means that they are random—at least in most interpretations of quantum mechanics. Like the fluctuations that provide for mutations in the evolutionary process, these might serve to trigger what complexity theorists call a bifurcation, when a system moves from one quasi-stable state to another.

The brain could operate that way, being basically classical and deterministic but occasionally jolted by a random quantum event. What is interesting is that the decisions made in this fashion would be indistinguishable from creative acts or free will. Is that all there is to it?

Examples of such phenomena include extrasensory perception (ESP), mind-over-matter or psychokinesis (PK), provable out-of-body experiences (OBE), and near-death experiences (NDE) that are actual returns from the dead. Other related phenomena include demonstrated efficacy of distant intercessory prayer and the successful verification that humans have obtained revealed truths that they could not possibly know by natural means.

In several reviews and interviews, theologians and other commentators have noted that “No religion makes claims that humans possess ESP.” Now, I do not claim they do either. Nowhere do I argue, “ESP does not exist so therefore God does not exist.” I only hypothesize that some evidence for a spirit or soul should be found. This could be ESP, PK, OBE, NDE, prayers, revelations, or some other paranormal phenomenon that exceeds the capabilities of matter. I then take the fact that we see none of these to mean that a God who provided us with spirits or souls does not exist.

If we go back though the early history of psychic studies, which started in the mid 1800s, we see signs that most investigators were motivated by personal religiosity to find evidence for the soul or an immaterial force of some kind. After all, wireless telegraphy had been demonstrated; why not wireless telepathy? Let me just mention two early psychic researchers, each of whom held prominent status in physics and chemistry.

William Crookes (1832–1919) discovered the chemical elements thallium and selenium and invented the vacuum tube that was used to discover the electron. Sir Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) transmitted radio signals before Marconi (but after Tesla) and invented spark-plug ignition as well as the vacuum tube that was used in electronic circuits and other devices well into the mid-twentieth century. Ignoring what he must have known were the proper protocols of good science, Crookes performed poorly controlled experiments with fraudulent mediums that he felt confirmed his already held belief in a spirit world. Lodge also allowed his personal beliefs to override any natural skepticism he would be expected to exhibit as a competent scientist. His son Raymond had been killed in Flanders in 1915, and Lodge insisted that Raymond was communicating with his family from beyond the grave. Lodge also allowed himself to be bamboozled by phony psychics.

A third major figure in the history of psychic research was Joseph Banks Rhine (1895–1980), who made an honest attempt to do careful laboratory tests of paranormal phenomena at Duke University (although cheating by others did take place in his lab). Rhine coined the term “ESP” and founded the Journal of Parapsychology after his submissions to conventional journals were continually turned down. Rhine was a religious man and hoped his work would help reconcile science and religion by finding scientific evidence for a nonphysical component in humans. He clearly did not regard observation of spiritual phenomena as beyond the capabilities of science.

Today’s parapsychologists are usually very careful about denying that they are drawing any supernatural conclusions when they claim evidence for a paranormal effect. In this way, they are able to position themselves a little closer to the fringe of science where the widely accepted dogma holds that science can say nothing about the supernatural. I have strongly criticized this assertion (see “Supernatural Science,” Skeptical Briefs, March 2006, pp. 11–15).

Let us imagine what would happen if well-controlled experiments on ESP found evidence that passes the most stringent tests that science can provide, leading even the most skeptical to admit that the phenomenon is real, thus requiring James Randi to award his million dollar prize. Surely scientists of every stripe would initially seek to explain the results in terms of known natural processes and perform experiments that would test the hypothesis.

For example, the strength of the ESP signal would be measured as a function of direction and distance from the source. If it fell off with the square of the distance, then this would be evidence that ESP emissions are a form of energy and probably a natural phenomenon. Indeed, at the suggestion of Einstein, Rhine performed such an experiment. When he found no “distance effect,” he concluded that the phenomenon was not physical. He avoided the more obvious conclusion that the phenomenon was not real.

If that experiment was duplicated with a clear ESP signal that did not fall off with distance, then we would have evidence that ESP violates energy conservation and does not behave as expected for a material force. While it would undoubtedly be argued that this result could still be natural, energy conservation is such a fundamental law of matter that its violation would be strong evidence for a reality beyond matter.

I imagine that parapsychologists would be delighted to see such an empirical result. How much more important to have discovered evidence for the soul—for a world beyond matter—than just another form of physical communication! And you can rest assured that theologians would readily change their tune about whether established evidence for ESP is evidence for a human soul.

What we see here is simply the reappearance of the ancient philosophical doctrine of idealism, this time arising from misinterpretations of certain quantum phenomena that strike many people as weird because they are not part of everyday experience.

In 1800, Thomas Young passed light through two narrow slits in an otherwise opaque screen. He observed alternating bright and dark bands of light on the surface illuminated by the light from the slits. This was interpreted as the pattern of interference between light waves emerging from each slit. Since then, science has treated light as a wave phenomenon.

In the early twentieth century, it was discovered that light also seems to be composed of localized particles called photons. In addition, objects such as electrons, which we normally think of as particles, also were seen to exhibit the interference behavior associated with waves.

Where does the mind come into all this? Well, it seems at first glance that whether an object is a wave or a particle depends on what you decide to measure. If you measure a wave property such as interference, then the object is a wave. If you decide to measure a particle property such as position, then the object is a particle.

For example, suppose in the double-slit experiment that we put a photon detector behind one slit. If the detector is on, then we know which slit the photon passed through and we get the two bright bands on the wall expected for a localized photon passing through either slit. In this case, the light is particle-like. If the detector is off, we get the interference pattern, and the light is wavelike.

Furthermore, we can set up the experiment so that the decision to measure a wave property or particle property is made after the object leaves the source. That source can be light from a galaxy thirteen billion light-years away. Some take this to mean that the mind not only can control the reality of whether an object is a particle or a wave, but it can do this over a distance equal to the size of the visible universe and thirteen billion years back in time.

At least, that’s the snake oil that Chopra and the Bleep and Secret crews are trying to sell us. In fact, it is easily shown to be bogus. We can set up a double-slit experiment in which the surface illuminated by the light from the slits contains an array of photon detectors sensitive at the one-photon level. Even with the slit detector off, we get individual, localized hits just as expected for particles. But as you accumulate data, a fascinating thing happens. The pattern of hits takes the shape of the same diffraction pattern first observed by Thomas Young in 1800!

So, the photon is not the wave; the wave is the statistical distribution of multiple photons. In quantum mechanics this wave is called the “wave function,” a mathematical tool used to compute the probability for finding a particle at a particular position.

Suppose we start out not knowing the position of a particle. Then the particle’s wave function is in some sense spread throughout the universe. It has the same magnitude at every spatial point. Then when a measurement is made, the particle’s position is found to be in some small region the size of the detector, and the wave function is therefore localized. Physicists say that the wave function has “collapsed” as the result of the measurement. Einstein called this a “spooky action at a distance,” since the collapse happens instantaneously throughout the universe. Again, it would seem that the act of conscious measurement has reached out in space at infinite speed to the farthest corner of the universe.

But there is nothing spooky about it. Suppose you are a resident of a planet in Alpha Centauri. Back on Earth, a friend enters your name in a lottery in which your chance of winning the prize of a million dollars is one in a million. If you win the lottery, your probability of winning collapses instantaneously to unity, and your wealth increases instantaneously by a million dollars. But it takes four years for the news, traveling at the speed of light, to reach you and your Centauri bank. You can’t start spending the money until that happens. That’s how it is in quantum physics. The collapse of the abstract wave function is just a mathematical artifice. Even though this happens at faster than the speed of light, any signal and other practical result will be limited by relativity and the laws of conventional physics.

In short, nothing in quantum mechanics requires that our minds be able to act across great distances and back in time to control reality as part of some cosmic consciousness. As Philip K. Dick put it, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

Nevertheless, most scientists seem to prefer as a practical matter that science should stay clear of religious issues. This is a good strategy for those who wish to avoid conflicts between science and religion, which might lead to less public acceptance of science and that most dreaded of all consequences—lower funding. However, religions make assertions about the natural world, and these have no special immunity from being examined under the cold light of critical analysis. Scientists are abdicating their responsibilities when they avoid applying their expertise to evaluate religious claims that can be tested against empirical facts, especially when religious thinking is used to override science in the making of public policy.

In one of its official statements supporting evolution, the Academy states, “Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral” (National Academy of Sciences 1998). This is simply untrue. Not only can science examine any claim that bears on empirical data, reputable scientists from reputable institutions are doing just that, for example, in experiments on the efficacy of intercessory prayer.

In the battle between evolution and creationism, the political strategy adopted by many scientific organizations such as the Academy and the National Center for Science Education has been to seek support of Catholics and moderate Christians whose clergy have stated their support for evolution. The uncomfortable fact that evolution implies humanity is an accident, rather than the special creation of God in his own image, is conveniently swept under the rug.

But there are worse things happening in America and the world as the direct result of religious thinking than children hearing the dreaded word creation in the classroom. Both abroad and at home, we are engaged in cultural wars that threaten the very existence of secular society and the health, safety, and well-being of humans everywhere. Islamic radicals have declared war on the modern world and are steadily gaining adherents in all countries with large Muslim populations. George W. Bush’s “War on Terror,” which he has characterized in religious terms as a holy war of good against evil, has advanced rather than deterred this trend.

The born-again U.S. president has based his policies, foreign and domestic, on faith rather than evidence—faith that his own instincts are divinely inspired and any evidence that contradicts these instincts may be ignored and even suppressed.

A series of recent books has extensively documented how a small group of influential Christian extremists, with large financial resources at their disposal, have taken control of the Republican party and used churches to build enough support at the polls to gain control of the White House and Congress in 2000 and 2004 (Mooney 2005, Phillips 2006, Goldberg 2006, Linker 2006, Hedges 2007). Only with the 2006 midterm election has their influence slipped. But this may be attributed to the unmitigated disaster of Iraq rather than any sea change in public opinion. You can bet these groups have not thrown in the towel on their goal of converting America to a Christian theocracy.

Let me list some examples of Bush policies that are founded in theology rather than evidence and how he and his administration have acted to suppress scientific studies that contradict the faith-based assumptions that lie behind these policies.

In one of his first acts as president, Bush restored a gag rule on aid to international organizations that counsel women on abortion. Of millions of dollars spent on preventing and treating AIDS in Africa, 30 percent was earmarked for promoting sexual abstinence and none for condoms. Here at home, $170 million was spent in 2005 alone on promoting abstinence-only sex education in schools. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was pressured to remove from its Web site scientific findings that abstinence-only programs do not work. According to a 2003 report issued by Democratic Congressman Henry A. Waxman and the minority staff of the Government Reform Committee, the Bush administration modified performance measures for abstinence-based programs to make them look effective.

Similarly, under pressure from conservatives in Congress, a National Cancer Institute Web site was changed to reflect the view that there may be a risk of breast cancer associated with abortions, a claim made by evangelicals that has no scientific support (Mooney 2005, pp. 206—207).

Bush’s obstruction of stem-cell research, which holds promise to provide a wide range of therapies, is based on the theological view that a 150-cell embryo contains a human soul. While scientists may prefer to remain neutral on the matter of souls, they should point out that an embryo cannot suffer while stem-cell research could result in the reduction of real suffering in fully developed humans (Harris, 2005, pp. 165—167; Mooney 2006, pp. 185—204).

Bush’s appointee to the Food and Drug Administration’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory committee, gynecologist W. David Hager, is an evangelical who prescribes Bible readings to treat premenstrual syndrome. Hager was primarily responsible for the FDA blocking over-the-counter sales of the birth-control drug known as Plan B. This was despite testimony before his committee by a scientific advisory panel that “Plan B was the safest product that we have ever seen brought before us” (Mooney 2005, pp. 215—220).

Evangelicals have also influenced Bush administration policies on the environment, leading the White House to intervene in 2003 to remove cautions against global warming from a report on the environment (Mooney 2005, p. 90). More recently, Bush has seemed to make an about-face on global warming, but NASA is still delaying or canceling a number of satellites designed to obtain critical information on Earth climate. Bush gives the space station higher priority, despite the fact that a consensus of scientists regard it as scientifically useless.

In October 2005, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee at NASA headquarters, sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations for middle-school students. The message said the word theory should be added after every mention of the Big Bang. The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be, to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator” (Revkin 2006b). This was just another instance where NASA scientists were pressured to limit discussions on topics uncomfortable to the Bush administration, including global warming (Revkin 2006a).

While scientists have begun to speak out on these issues, they have not directly confronted the religious thinking that forms the basis of these policies. Presumably, they fear offending “deeply held beliefs.” I am pleading that religion no longer be given this free ride. The stakes are too high.

Let science compete with religion in the marketplace of ideas. Scientists should question religious assumptions just as they question those of other scientists. And they should vigorously protest whenever faith is used to suppress sound scientific results.

References

• Goldberg, Michelle. 2006. Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. New York: W.W. Norton.
• Harris, Sam. 2005. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: W.W. Norton.
• Hedges, Chris. 2007. American Fascists. New York: Free Press.
• Larson, Edward J., and Larry Witham. 1998. Leading scientists still reject God. Nature 394:313.
• Linker, Damon. 2006. The Theocons: Secular American under Siege. New York: Doubleday.
• Mooney, Chris. 2005. The Republican War on Science. New York: Basic Books. National Academy of Sciences. 1998. Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science. Washington, D.C: National Academy of Sciences: p. 58. Available at: www.nap.edu/ catalog/5787.html; accessed March 5, 2006.
• Phillips, Kevin. 2006. American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. New York: Viking Penguin.
• Revkin, Andrew C. 2006a. Climate expert says NASA tried to silence him. The New York Times. January 29.
• Revkin, Andrew C. 2006b. NASA chief backs agency openness. The New York Times. February 4.