Doctor Stephen Hawking's latest book is set to be released soon, and with much fanfare. There's no surprise here, given how well-received was his last major work, A Brief History of Time, written nearly a quarter of a century ago. Although I have heard relatively little about the book--beyond that it was in the process of being written--there is one detail which has been widely disseminated, perhaps even by Dr Hawking himself. This is that the book will touch on the one topic which actually helps prominent scientists to sell their latest books, not to mention to get the buyers to actually read said books: the question of God. Both theists and atheists--especially anti-theists--alike are able to sell more books if they offer their latest argument “for” or “against” God couched in scientific terms.

Doctor Hawkings himself is no stranger to this, as he briefly mentions God (albeit metaphorically only) in his previous book. His latest work, however, is reported to “disprove” the existence of God by “proving” that there is no need for a First Cause. The fact that the First Cause (or Unmoved Mover) is but one of St Thomas Aquinas' five arguments for God's existence and that there are plenty of additional arguments aside, I find it highly unlikely that Mr Hawking will successfully prove that there was no need for a First Cause. Such an attempt has been made variously by a variety of scientists and philosophers of science, most of whose tenor in writing their proofs suggest that they have an ax to grind with this supposedly nonexistent entity.

Hawkings himself has previously contributed to these arguments against the First Cause by the development of his (quantum) wave theory of the universe. This was later popularized by philosophy professor Quentin Smith. Smith argues in his essay Big Bang Cosmology and Atheism: Why the Big Bang Is No Help to Theists (Free Inquiry, 18 no. 2) that Hawking's Wave Function of the Universe proves not only that God did not need to cause the universe, but also that God could not have caused it. Professor Smith does, of course, make a few assumptions which are, to put it lightly, not well grounded, and from these follows a chain of logic which is not unbroken to the conclusion which he had been looking for from the onset. According to Professor Smith, the Wave Function of the Universe “is based on assigning numbers to all possible universes. All of the numbers cancel out except for a universe with features that our universe possesses, such as containing intelligent organisms.” Among the flaws of this theory are that there is not a meaningful way to assign numbers to “possible universes” whose existence--let alone properties--we cannot ascertain. That this theory happens to explain some data from the COBE satellites does nothing to dispel the fact that these numbers assigned to it are little better than the numbers of the famous Drake Equation. So much for a “rational critique” of the cosmological theist's argument.

Worse still, the argument of Professor Smith--indeed, of Dr Hawking--relies in part on a particular interpretation of Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle. That principle yields a relationship between the certainty of measurement for a duration of time and for an amount of energy, such that the product of the uncertainties in the measurements of time and energy must not be less than h-bar, that is Planck's constant divided by twice pi. Thus, in an arbitrarily short period of time, there is an arbitrarily large uncertainty in the total measurement of energy present in a system. Therefore, the argument goes, if an infinitesimally short period of time, an arbitrarily large amount of energy may spring into existence.

But there's more to it that this. In his own essay Cosmology: An Empirical Science? (republished as a chapter in his The Limits of a Limitless Science and Other Essays) the late Fr Stanley L Jaki notes that the uncertainty principle yields only a virtual universe. Such a universe would be

Similar to other virtual particles that can exist only within the time limit set by Heisenburg's formula. But eve that existence assumes the existence of at least two real universes between which the virtual universe can act as an exchange particle. In other words, even in good physics, to say nothing of good philosophy of knowledge, the first step is truly real matter and not merely virtual matter or universe.

In other words, the universe itself cannot spring into existence from nothing, no mater how small the time increment of measurement is. As Fr Jaki puts it earlier in the same essay, “the ontological difference between being and nonbeing is infinite.” The Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle means that there is a limit to the precision of measuring the total energy (or mass) of the universe. However, as Jaki notes “something entirely different is meant if one grants the Copenhagen interpretation which implies the inference that what cannot be measured exactly, cannot take place exactly.”

Perhaps most problematic for these scientific arguments against a created universe--even if we do grant that the Copenhagen interpretation is correct--is that such a universe is not only finite in duration, but that it also must be constantly changing in a dramatic way. For when the uncertainty principle is invoked to create the vast amounts of energy (and matter) which is found in the universe, the time duration during which these energies and matter can exist must be very short. Moreover, there is nothing to prevent a second or third or billionth “big bang” from occurring within the existing universe, so long as this, too happens on a short time scale. The result is that not only would new universes be constantly popping into existence ex nihilo--a phenomenon thus far never observed--but our own would be constantly popping out of existence. Moreover, even if we grant the bizarre interpretation that our own universe is constantly vanishing, but then reappearing as one of these other universes, the Copenhagen interpretation requires* that the energy and mass of these new “reincarnations” of the universe be utterly unknown.

Hence at the best our own universe would return with new and wildly varying mass and energy distributions during each (very short) interval of time. Such a phenomena has not been observed, and it would overturn many of the laws and theories which are foundational to physics. The frequent popping into and out of existence of the universe, each time with random distributions of mass and energy certainly does imply something else about the universe: namely, that it is a contingent thing. In this case, it is contingent on the laws of quantum mechanics with several additional assumptions, including the Copenhagen interpretation. But as St Thomas Aquinas argued, contingent things cannot continue to exist on their own, but must be supported by things which are not contingent. The laws of physics alone are not sufficient in this case, since those same laws imply that the universe which exists will not continue to do so. Rather, that non-contingent thing must be beyond and above the laws of physics. Thus, in attempting to scientifically weaken St Thomas' First Cause argument for God's existence, atheists have unwittingly lent some scientific support to St Thomas' Contingency argument.

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*Interestingly enough, many variations of this interpretation require the existence of an observer who is external to the universe in order to cause the wave functions to collapse: in order for a measurement to be made--precisely or otherwise--there must be someone to do the measuring. Thus, the Unmoved Mover is once again needed, though in a new an unique manner, as the Unmeasured Measurer.