Science and Faith

Ockham’s Razor, ABC Sunday 26 June 2005

Summary

Bill Pearcy from Canberra used to be a fighter pilot in the RAAF and also studied Physics at The University of Melbourne. He’s now an Honorary Lay Canon of St Saviour’s Cathedral in Goulburn. In this talk he looks at the nature of time and its relationship to God. Program Transcript

Robyn Williams: Last week in this program we had a cardiologist talking about international politics, global warming and fuel supplies. This week we go one better and have an ex-fighter pilot look at the nature of time and its relationship to God.

Bill Pearcy spent most of his career in the RAAF flying Sabres and Mirage aircraft. He also studied physics at the University of Melbourne. He’s now an honorary lay canon of St Saviour’s Cathedral, Goulburn.

Bill Pearcy: Let me begin by saying that there is no such thing as absolute time. Time cannot exist by itself. Time, along with matter and space is a constituent part of our universe. Time cannot exist without matter and space. So it makes no sense to talk about a time before our universe came into existence.

Just try this little thought experiment. Imagine that you are somehow in the nothingness out of which our universe came. There is no matter and no space. You metaphorically close your eyes, and then you open them again. How much time has passed? Was it a nanosecond or was it a billion years? You have no way of knowing because nothing has changed or could change. In fact, there is nothing to change. It is not just that you have no way of measuring, there is nothing to measure.

And, by the way, there is no background, in which time could be ticking away.

There are some quite significant philosophical consequences of abandoning the notion of absolute time, which I do not believe have been thought through.

To begin with, our time, like our universe, is finite, not infinite. Scientists are now in the process of measuring the amount of matter in our universe. They are also measuring its spatial limits, and are speculating about how and when our universe both came into being and might cease to exist. They generally agree that it began in a Big Bang, and it seems possible, even likely, that it will eventually end in an equally Big Crunch.

What does that do to our understanding of infinity?

Up until the time of Galileo, most people thought of the world as a strictly limited place. It was only with the development of science that the notion of an infinite universe came into being. However, that has since become the accepted wisdom. What would it mean for us to go back to the old understanding, though admittedly on a much larger scale?

Also in modern science there is a move to bring together the understanding of how the universe works on the macro scale, that is, Cosmology, and how the universe works on the micro scale, that is, Sub-atomic physics. Until fairly recently these two areas of endeavour seemed to be governed by quite different sets of laws and consequently, were quite incompatible. Now a number of scientists are trying to bring these areas together in a Grand unified Theory (or a Theory of Everything as it’s sometimes called). If they could do that, they feel that they would have a complete explanation of our universe.

The interesting thing is that as they grapple with this problem, they are also, perhaps unconsciously, raising the possibility that there might not be such an all-encompassing scientific explanation. Indeed there are some indications that the limits of science itself might preclude such a solution.

What then? In the end, hard scientific explanations might have to give way to philosophical and religious concepts. In this way science and religion might be largely reunited after an estrangement of several hundred years.

For myself, I already accept that both science and religion are valid. And I am pretty sure that the majority of people are of the same view or, at least, they believe there is a God and that science works.

What I am interested in is the light that science and religion can shed on each other, rather than in setting them up in opposition. My interest in this subject was kindled when my daughter Kate asked me how predestination and free will could both exist. In thinking about that, I came to the conclusion that the answer lay in the nature of time. To begin with, what does the fact that there is no absolute time say about God? If one accepts that God has created the universe, through the Big Bang or some other means, then he must have created time in the process.

So God is not constrained by time, and God is not carried along in time as we are. God simply is. St Augustine summed it up about 1600 years ago when he wrote, ‘It is therefore true to say that when you had not made anything, there was no time, because time itself was of your making. And no time is co-eternal with you, because you never change; whereas, if time never changed, it would not be time’.

Modern science simply confirms what St Augustine already understood long ago. It follows that God is not waiting to find out what the future holds. For God, it is already present. You might imagine God as seeing the whole of creation, beginning, middle and end, all laid out before him. Rather like the pictures on the wall of an ancient tomb, or perhaps like the frames of a movie film.

This has significant implications for some theological concepts, particularly predestination and free will, which is where I began.

At first glance, God’s knowledge of the future might suggest predestination. But that does not take into account that we ourselves are moving through time. For example, at this very moment you might be deciding whether or not to make a cup of tea. Whatever you decide you will be making a free will choice, that is, putting aside the now discredited notion that absolutely everything we do is causally determined.

But having made that choice, you will not be able to go back and change it. It will have been swept away in time to become an immutable fact. And similarly for all our lives, our free choices are turned into unchangeable facts by the passage of time. When we come to our end, there will be nothing left for us to change. We will then know what God already knows. Does that mean that it was predestined? Certainly not. It simply means that our free will, within time, exists alongside God’s foreknowledge, outside of time.

As an aside, I hope this might give some relief to those people who might have a sense of despair, thinking that there is nothing they can do to alter their fate; that they are helpless to influence what will happen to them.

The absence of absolute time has implications for other concepts as well. For example, eternity.

The common understanding of eternity is of time simply going on and on forever. But as science now indicates, time can only exist as long as space and matter, that is our universe, exists. And since science also indicates that the universe is finite (that is, it had a beginning some time ago and will come to an end one way or another sometime in the future), our time, and hence our eternity are finite also.

I say ‘our’ eternity because of the theoretical possibility of other universes existing, with their own time that is not linked to our time. In saying this I am putting aside the concept of ‘reborn’ universes, canvassed by Stephen Hawking, where the collapse of one universe leads in some way to the birth of another. Even then, the continuity of time, at least as we know it, might be open to question.

But what would the possible existence of other unconnected universes say about a creator God? Wouldn’t that put him in an entirely different league to a God who is somehow bound up only with our own particular set of space, time and matter? That is a God beyond imagining, and certainly not an anthromorphic entity.

Of course, if eternity is limited, that also has implications for traditional notions of an afterlife as well. The common, and dare I say mediaeval, notion of afterlife as a transfer into some future unending version of the present world, no longer holds up. Indeed the whole understanding of an afterlife needs re-examination.

Let me hasten to say that does not mean that people in the past have been seriously deluded. As a matter of faith I accept that there is an afterlife. What it does mean is that in any age we describe religious notions in terms that we can comprehend. What was comprehensible to people of the middle ages was a heaven much like the world they lived in. That is no longer really sensible for us, and we need to find descriptions that satisfy our present understanding. I suggest that scientific descriptions are more helpful for us. We need to think of an afterlife that involves a transfer of consciousness into a timeless state that is linked in some way to God’s being.

Lastly, let me look briefly at what religion might have to say to science. For a start, it might note that science is beginning to exhibit the characteristics of a religion. What do I hear you say? Surely science is the very antithesis of religion, with its insistence on verifiable facts and its dismissal of any God and the supernatural.

But isn’t science in danger of presenting itself as an alternative system of belief? For example, doesn’t science purport to seek the truth, which is what religions claim to do? And doesn’t science seek to provide, or at least hope it will soon provide, the meaning of life, the universe and everything. As I said before, some scientists believe that if they can come up with a Unified Theory they will have found the ultimate meaning of the universe. And scientific laws and theories are pretty much the equivalent of religious doctrines. Both continue to evolve as new understandings come to light.

The fact that scientific laws can be tested merely shows that the whole scientific system is generally consistent rather than that it is ultimately true. Religious doctrines have to be consistent, too.

Science also has its mysteries. Take light, for example. It can be treated as an electromagnetic waveform, and it can also be treated as a stream of particles. This is a mysterious duality that reminds me of the religious mystery of the trinity. They are both attempts to come to grips with the inexplicable, and each is appropriate in its context.

Ultimately, it makes no more sense to try to check the validity of religious doctrines by scientific methods than it does to try to check the validity of scientific laws by conformity to religious doctrine.

The two are looking at the world from different standpoints. For example, the Biblical account of Creation has its religious meaning, and the theory of evolution has its scientific meaning. Perhaps one should ask oneself this question:

When the universe began, how long would a day have been? One might think of an answer in religious terms, and in scientific terms.

An understanding of God’s relationship with time also has implications in other areas as well. For example, the nature of prophecy is explicable in much the same way as the nature of predestination.

One might also consider what the scientific possibility of other universes could have to say about the biblical references to heavenly realms. Or one might even consider a quantum mechanical explanation of the resurrection of Jesus.

Hasn’t it all reached a point where science and religion should recognise each other’s validity? Which brings me back to my central point. It’s about time we stopped considering science and religion as mutually exclusive and began accepting them as complementary. That way, we might all become more whole, in mind, body and spirit.

Which is one reason why I entitled my book, ‘It’s About Time’.

Robyn Williams: And ‘It’s About Time’ is published by Trafford, not to be confused with Paul Davis’ book, which sounds the same.

Bill Pearcy is a former fighter pilot and his daughter Kate that he mentioned earlier, asking him complex questions about metaphysics, turns out to be a producer of ‘Life Matters’ on ABC Radio National.