Implications of a Multiverse 2

In view of the dwindling place of human beings in the scheme of the universe as the size of the known universe becomes known with each scientific revolution, it is natural that people may lose heart. When we gaze at the night sky, we are often awed by its immensity. Blaise Pascal once wrote: "The eternal silence of those infinite spaces strikes me with terror.".In the same way that Copernicus banished Earth from the centre of the universe, Hubble displaced the entire Milky Way galaxy from the centre of the universe and the recent discovery of dark matter or dark energy make us realize that "the higher chemical elements that make up our bodies comprise only 0.03 percent of the total matter/energy content of the universe and as the visible universe is expanding, it looks more and more like a grain of sand in a much larger, flat universe, which universe may itself be constantly sprouting new universes. And finally, if M-theory proves successful, we must face the possibility that even the familiar dimensionality of space and time must be expanded to 11 dimensions." (As to why 11, see my earlier blog). The visible universe of which the Milky Way forms part may itself be just a tiny speck in a sea of universes.

Those who think that it is God who created man and our Earth and the sun, the moon and the stars rely heavily on what has been called the "anthropic principle" ( ie. the principle that the constants of nature are fine-tuned to allow for the emergence of life and intelligence). Stephen Hawkings ( of A Brief History of Time fame) once said, "If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million, the universe would have recollapsed before it reached its present size...the odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the big bang are enormous.". Physicists have since found that for human life to emerge, we require the value of 29 physical constants to remain the way that they are! How precious life and consciousness really are! In addition, the human brain has about an estimated 150 billion nerve cells and an infinity of interconnections between them. That three pound universe must be the most complex organ in the entire universe! 

Quantum theory is even more amazing. Kaku says, "If one subscribes to the Wigner interpretation of the Schrodinger cat problem, then we necessarily see the hand of consciousness everywhere. The infinite chain of observers, each one viewing the previous observer, ultimately leads to a cosmic observer, perhaps God himself. In this picture, the universe exists because there is a deity to observe it. And if Wheeler's interpretation is correct, then the entire universe is dominated by consciousness and information. In this picture, consciousness is the dominant force that determines the nature of existence." Sir James Jeans once wrote; "When we pass to extremes of size in either direction--whether to the cosmos as a whole or to the inner recesses of the atom--the mechanical interpretation of Nature fails. We come to entities and phenomena which are in no sense mechanical. To me, they seem less suggestive of mechanical than of mental processes: the universe seems to be nearer to a great thought than to a great machine...". Archibald Wheeler says, "It is not only that we are adapted to the universe. The universe is adapted to us." Wheeler thus claims that we live in a "participatory universe." We create our our own reality by making observations! Nobel prize biology George Wald wrote, "Physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is the atom's way of knowing about atoms.". Unitarian minister Gary Kawalski says,"The universe, it could be said, exists to celebrate itself and revel in its own beauty. And if the human race is one facet of the cosmos growing toward awareness of itself, our purpose must surely be to preserve and perpetuate our world as well as to study it, not to despoil or destroy what has taken so long to produce."

If Schrodinger's cat in the mind experiment is both dead and alive at the same time before the quantum wave collapses by observation and if there really is a multiverse, then even if one choice is made in one universe, another different choice could have been made in another. If so, moral choice would no longer make any sense except in one particular universe! In a deeper and more comprehensive sense, we would then have no ultimate control over our fates in different universes. If so, terrestrial morality would have meaning only on the earth but not anywhere else! Kaku writes, "although our parallel selves living in different quantum universes may have precisely the same genetic code, at crucial junctures of life, our opportunities, our mentors and our dreams may lead us down different paths, leading to different life histories and different destinies.". If  And if we are able to clone ourselves, he asks, "do our clones have a soul? Are we responsible for our clone's actions? In a quantum universe, we would have an infinite number of quantum clones. Since some of our quantum clones might perform actrs of evil, are we then responsible for them? Does our soul suffer for the transgressions of our quantum clones?" But the situation may not be hopeless. To Kaku, each distinct quantum universe obeys Newtonian-like laws on the macroscopic scale, so we can still live knowing that our actions will have predictable consequences and that the laws of causality will, on average, "rigidly apply". So we shall still have to go to jail if we commit crimes on each individual quantum universe according to the laws of that parallel universe.

How do the new cosmologies impact our moral or religious destiny? Steven Weinberg writes, in The First Three Minutes, " The more the universe seems comprehensive, the more it also seems pointless...The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of teh grace of tragedy." He wrote later, "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil--that takes religion." He believes, like Shakepeare, that all the world is a stage, but "the tragedy is not in the script; the tragedy is that there is no script."! Stephen Hawkings thinks likewise. He says, "In a universe of blind forces,...some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.". They are not alone. Sandra Faber of the Lick Observatory and the UC Santa Cruz said, "I don't believe the earth was created for people. It was a planet created by natural processes, and, as part of the further continuation of those natural processes, life and intelligent life appeared. In exactly the same way, I think the universe was created out of some natural process, and our appearance in it was a totally natural result of physical laws in our particular portion of it. Implicit in the question, I think, is that there's some motive power that has a purpose beyond human existence. I don't believe in that...ultimately I agree with Weinberg that it's completely pointless from a human perspective." Margaret Geller of Harvard U said, "I guess my view of life is that you live your life and it's short. The thing is to have as rich an experience as you possibly can. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do something creative. I try to educate people.". She cannot be wrong.   One of the keys to human happiness must be knowledge. 

Don Page, an ex-student of Stephen Hawkings, now at U of Alberta, said,"In some sense, the physical laws seem to be analogous to the grammar and the language that God chose to use.". Charles Misner of U of Maryland, another physicist, says, "in religion there are very serious things, like the existence of God and the brotherhood of man, that are serious truths that we will one day learn to appreciate in perhaps a different language on a different scale...So I think there are real truths there, and in the sense of the majesty of the universe is meaningful, and we do owe honor and awe to its Creator."

Kaku, one of the advocates of string theory, says that the theory enables us to "view subatomic particles as notes on a vibrating string; the laws of chemistry correspond to the melodies one can play on these strings; the laws of physics correspond to the laws of harmony that govern these strings; the universe is a symphony of strings; and the mind of God can be viewed as cosmic music vibrating through hyperspace. If this analogy is valid, one must ask the next question: is there a composer? Did someone design the theory to allow for the richness of possible universes that we see in string theory? If the universe is like a finely tuned watch, is there a watchmaker?" According to Einstein, God probably had little choice in how he should design Earth if he wanted it to have human beings in it. His view is supported by string theory because to accommodate the data, plenty of anomalies will have to be solved and powerful symmetries had to be built in.To Kaku, "perhaps there might be a single, unique theory that obey all the postulates we demand in a theory." Einstein said he believed in "Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings....I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation...Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body." Kaku thinks that the strongest argument for the existence of God comes from teleology. "If string theory is eventually experimentally confirmed as the theory of everything, then we must ask where the equations themselves came from. If the unified field theory is truly unique, as Einstein believed, then we must ask where this uniqueness came from....Physicists who believed in this God believe that the universe is so beautiful and simple that its ultimate laws could not have been an accident. The universe could have been totally random or made up of lifeless electrons and neutrinos, incapable of creating any life, let alone an intelligent life." But Kaku thinks that even if the world shows certain design, he does not believe that this design gives personal meaning to humanity."No magic formula coming from cosmology and physics will enthrall the masses and enrich their spiritual lives", he says. .

To Kaku, "the real meaning in life is that we create our own meaning. It is our destiny to carve out our own future, rather than have it handed down from some higher authority". Alan Guth said, "It's okay to ask those questions, but one should not expect to get a wider answer from a physicist." Emotionally, he thinks that "life has a purpose...the purpose that we've given it and not a purpose that came out of any cosmic design." He agrees with Sigmund Freud that "what gives stability and meaning to our minds is work and love. Work helps to give us a sense of responsibility and purpose, a concrete focus to our labors and dreams...Work give us a sense of responsibility and purpose, a concrete focus to our labors and dreams...Work not only discipline and structure to our lives, it also provides us with a sense of pride, accomplishment, and a framework for fulfillment...Without love,we are lost, empty, without roots. We become drifters in our own land, unattached to the concerns of others ...To fulfill whatever talents we are born with.However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay...Instead of blaming fate, I think we should accept ourselves as we are and try to fulfill whatever dreams are within our capability. We should also leave the world a little better place than when we entered it....We are now at the most exciting time in human history, the cusp of some of the greatest cosmic discoveries and technological advances of all time. We are making the historical transition from being passive observers to the dance of nature to becoming choreographer of the dance of nature, with the ability to manipulate life, matter and intelligence. With this awesome power, however, comes great responsibility, to ensure that the fruits of our efforts are used wisely and for the benefit of all humanity...We hold in our hands the future destiny of our species...Perhaps the purpose and meaning of the current generation are to make sure that the transition to a type I civilization is a smooth one."

The conclusion reached by Kaku is the same as the one reached by me. If we wish our lives to have meaning, we must create our own and be the master of our own fate and not rely on others to tell us what it should be because each of us is unique and is differently endowed, differently educated and exposed to different cultural, social and intellectual influences such that what is appropriate to John may not necessarily be appropriate to Mary and vice versa. The traditional Christian God which dictates one set of what is purported to be universal values and purpose and meaning of life for all, is gone forever. If we wish to find spiritual meaning in our lives, we must learn to turn inward, not outward and look for it not outside but within ourselves and fashion it with our with our our mind, with our own spirit, with our own hands, with the materials of our own lives. If we don't, we should not be heard to complain that we can only have the happiness of a slave!