God vs. GUT

[Spud1k]

OK, read an article about symmetry in physics and it got me thinking...

Many people argue that religion isn't incompatible with science. Leaving the details aside, there are two schools of thought, one is that God (or whoever) created the universe and regularly takes a role in its affairs, but all his interventions take place on a supernatural level that science can't and will never be able to explain. The second school of thought is that God created the universe (from the big bang onwards), let all the laws of physics he created get on with it and all the stuff regarding souls, reincarnation, heaven and hell or whatever takes place behind the scenes, without God intervening in the physical world.

But then I got thinking about the issue of grand unified theories (GUTs). Since the seventies, the effort has been on to unify the laws of fundamental physics into some universally binding theory that encompasses everything. Since then, there's been this talk of superstrings and all sorts but the theoretical physicist's ideal is that everything will come down to one simple but incredibly abstract (8 dimensional operators anyone?) equation.

But that got me thinking... the way these things work out in abstract pure mathematics, it may turn out that this grand unified theory is the ONLY way the universe can work. There'll be no special parameters, no choice in the number of dimensions things exist in or anything. It'll simply be the only way that the universe can be. Which begs the question... is this in any way compatible with the create-and-stand-back philosophy of God? If there is only one way in which a universe can exist, what purpose would any creation entity serve?

But I'm sure the Buddhists would lap it up.

[Vox Humana]

If there is only one way in which a universe can exist, what purpose would any creation entity serve?

A couple of things:

If it exists, The GUT only applies to the way this universe can exist; it would not preclude the existence of other universes, with their own GUTs.
What's a creation entity? Why does it need a purpose?


The existence of the GUT would not speak to the existence of god. It presents no incompatibility with a deist theology; in fact they'd claim it as proof positive that god wrote the equation, or that it's running on god's computer.

It wouldn't even refute the existence of an interventionist god. The GUT would describe the natural working of the universe, but wouldn't preclude supernatural phenomena from occurring. Think of it as a simulation running on a computer - a programmer could pause the program, change the value of some variables, then restart the sim. It would be relatively easy to detect when this has happened, but it would be impossible to prove that it hasn't happened without re-running the simulation and comparing the first run to the second.

[Spud1k]

A couple of things:

If it exists, The GUT only applies to the way this universe can exist; it would not preclude the existence of other universes, with their own GUTs.
What's a creation entity? Why does it need a purpose?


The point about the GUT is that depending on how romantic you let the mathematicians get, it might be that it'll turn out that there can be only one GUT, that it'll be so mathematically perfect there'll be no other way of doing it. I'm not saying it is so, but hypothetically, if it were so, that would mean there could be no other universes with their own GUTs.

Further from that, if there was a creation entity but he/she/it could do nothing other than hit the 'go' button, there's no way in which they could make the universe that would ensure that billions of years down the line, people would evolve and they'd know to worship and fear them. So for all intents and purposes, any information humanity would have about their creator, they'd have had to make up themselves.

The existence of the GUT would not speak to the existence of god. It presents no incompatibility with a deist theology; in fact they'd claim it as proof positive that god wrote the equation, or that it's running on god's computer.

Out of interest, do you read the Webcomic Goats? If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it.

It wouldn't even refute the existence of an interventionist god. The GUT would describe the natural working of the universe, but wouldn't preclude supernatural phenomena from occurring. Think of it as a simulation running on a computer - a programmer could pause the program, change the value of some variables, then restart the sim. It would be relatively easy to detect when this has happened, but it would be impossible to prove that it hasn't happened without re-running the simulation and comparing the first run to the second.

It wouldn't refute the interventionist God, I agree with you on that. I should have made that point clearer in the OP.

[Vox Humana]

The point about the GUT is that depending on how romantic you let the mathematicians get, it might be that it'll turn out that there can be only one GUT, that it'll be so mathematically perfect there'll be no other way of doing it. I'm not saying it is so, but hypothetically, if it were so, that would mean there could be no other universes with their own GUTs.



I've never run across this idea, and I'm having a hard time imagining how it can be justified. On the contrary, it would seem a trivial task to come up with a set of equations that would describe a simple universe. Granted, this universe wouldn't be too interesting, but it would be a universe with its own GUT.

Do you have a link that explains the 'only one GUT' hypothesis, comprehensible by non-cosmologists? Do you find the arguments have merit?

We're not talking about the anthropic principle, are we?


Further from that, if there was a creation entity but he/she/it could do nothing other than hit the 'go' button, there's no way in which they could make the universe that would ensure that billions of years down the line, people would evolve and they'd know to worship and fear them. So for all intents and purposes, any information humanity would have about their creator, they'd have had to make up themselves.



This is the position in which Deists find themselves anyway, isn't it?

The more I think about this theology, the more absurd it seems - how can you claim to know anything of an entity that doesn't interact with the universe? In what way is it prescriptive? Say what you will about the Abrahamic religions, at least they're based on something. Deism seems more a technique to sleep in on Sunday morning and keep Aunt Mary off your back on Sunday afternoon.


Out of interest, do you read the Webcomic Goats? If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it.



Nope. Does it play off of the 'universe is a simulation' theme?

[Spud1k]

I've never run across this idea, and I'm having a hard time imagining how it can be justified. On the contrary, it would seem a trivial task to come up with a set of equations that would describe a simple universe. Granted, this universe wouldn't be too interesting, but it would be a universe with its own GUT.

Do you have a link that explains the 'only one GUT' hypothesis, comprehensible by non-cosmologists? Do you find the arguments have merit?

The article I was reading is mainly on the back of this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everything), although it's worth noting the theory isn't complete yet and experimental confirmation is even further away. Like I said, exactly how 'perfect' the final gut GUT will end up depends on how carried away you let the mathematicians get.

Personally, I'm remaining open-minded on it, but I did actually cover quantum electrodynamics during my degree and in that, you can use a single 4D equation to unambiguously describe electrostatics, magnetism and light in one fell swoop. Being able to do that for everything is a tantalising prospect. Only trouble is, I can barely deal with the 4D maths, let alone the twenty-something dimensions in string theory, so there my concept of it ends.

ETA: I guess the thing I'm driving at with the maths is that all the various physical phenomena that are in the universe could be just inevitabilities that drop out of pure maths, a bit like prime numbers, the Poincare conjecture, Fermat's last theorem, the Mandelbrot set, that sort of thing. From the pure mathematician's perspective, you have all these weird and wonderful things that once you get your head around them, are as natural and unambiguous as 1+1=2. I'm wondering if the universe is the same.

We're not talking about the anthropic principle, are we?

I don't think so. Maybe I am without realising it though.

This is the position in which Deists find themselves anyway, isn't it?

The more I think about this theology, the more absurd it seems - how can you claim to know anything of an entity that doesn't interact with the universe? In what way is it prescriptive? Say what you will about the Abrahamic religions, at least they're based on something. Deism seems more a technique to sleep in on Sunday morning and keep Aunt Mary off your back on Sunday afternoon.

I guess the logic is that the creator created the universe in such a way as to ensure things fatalistically worked out a certain way down the line. But the more I think about that since started this thread, the more I realise that this is not the main problem in the theory.

Nope. Does it play off of the 'universe is a simulation' theme?

The current story arc (http://www.goats.com/archive/050414.html) goes along the lines of the universe being a simulation, but the code has a bug in it that will cause it to crash in 2012. However, if you're not familiar with the comic, getting into it takes a lot of effort.

[Beerina]

Pure math still isn't "stuff", so there's always the issue of what underlies reality.

Moreover, a mathematical model makes predictions about reality, and hopefully reflects how reality actually operates. But it might just duplicate the relationships of reality without accurately reflecting what goes on at all "in reality".

Consider a simple inverse-square law of gravity. It says nothing about how gravity works, per se. A dimple in 4d spacetime? A magical stretching cord? A mysterious force field in an otherwise flat space? Etc.

[Vox Humana]

Pure math still isn't "stuff", so there's always the issue of what underlies reality.


It may turn out that "stuff" is purely math; I'd guess that the discovery of a GUT would be strong evidence for this.

Moreover, a mathematical model makes predictions about reality, and hopefully reflects how reality actually operates. But it might just duplicate the relationships of reality without accurately reflecting what goes on at all "in reality".


This is a question that I've been wrestling with for a while now: are the equations we use to express physical laws simply descriptive of the world we see, or is the world a result of those equations? In the past I would have argued for the former; surely the universe has to be more complex than a simple set of equations! But I'm not so sure any more. When the equations start predicting counter-intuitive phenomena (like virtual particles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle)) our initial reaction is that it's an artifact of the model. But when we look into it further and find those strange things are real, I start to get the feeling that we're looking not at man-made models of our universe, but at the source code that runs the whole thing.

[Toke]

I think you are a little too optimistic there, equations get closer and closer to describing reality accurately, and some of them might have reached it.

But I get a bit sceptic when you need invisible mass and negative energi to make the current law of gravity fit observations.
I do not belive in source code. Perhaps from lack of knowlegde of highend physics.

[gumboot]

I thought this would be a thread discussing "gut instinct" versus "the will of God"

My money was on Gut, by a nose.

[GreyICE]

I'll tell you what. Produce a GUT. If it actually works, we can worry about the philosophy... while building things previously undreamed of.

A GUT would be the greatest discovery in the history of physics. Possibly in the history of science, rivaled maybe only by DNA.

[Spud1k]

I think you are a little too optimistic there, equations get closer and closer to describing reality accurately, and some of them might have reached it.

But I get a bit sceptic when you need invisible mass and negative energi to make the current law of gravity fit observations.
I do not belive in source code. Perhaps from lack of knowlegde of highend physics.

I don't know. Relativity theory and quantum mechanics are the products of some pretty out-of-the-box thinking (to put it mildly) but some of their weirder predictions (e.g. entanglement) have proved to be down the line correct, despite the fact that they are completely counterintuitive. It's things like that that make me think there might be something to the whole 'source code' philosophy (have to remember that term, thanks Vox).

But maybe that's just the wannabe pure mathematician inside me talking. For all their romance, they still haven't cracked it and given that I could barely get my head around QED, I'm not in a position to comment about how likely they are to succeed.

[Radrook]

Well, since God was part of the original question, and at the risk of having all hell break loose in my direction, the biblical God is said to have created a spirit realm before a material one. So those who might be using the biblical God as their reference point should keep that in mind.

As for GUT-it would have absolutely no bearing on such a realm since it isn't akin to matter ands the GUT relates to forces in relation to matter as we know it.

BTW

Speaking of multiple universes requires that we give the word
"universe" a different meaning than all that exists. Universes would then be no different that galaxies which were once referred to as island universes except for possibly differing laws of nature.
Then of course the GUT becomes relative and not all
encompassing as it was originally conceived to be.

[NobbyNobbs]

I don't think religion and science are totally incompatible, even with a GUT. The way I see it, science tries to explain how the universe works. Religion tries to find a reason why it exists. (Not why-how, but why-why, in the philosophical, existential meaning of the word.)

[Radrook]

For those who are extremely God-sensitive-please note that my response was to the original God-related post question and not to any of the godless commentaries which came later. So since so, no provocation was intended.

[Toke]

I don't know. Relativity theory and quantum mechanics are the products of some pretty out-of-the-box thinking (to put it mildly) but some of their weirder predictions (e.g. entanglement) have proved to be down the line correct, despite the fact that they are completely counterintuitive. It's things like that that make me think there might be something to the whole 'source code' philosophy (have to remember that term, thanks Vox).

But maybe that's just the wannabe pure mathematician inside me talking. For all their romance, they still haven't cracked it and given that I could barely get my head around QED, I'm not in a position to comment about how likely they are to succeed.

I might misunderstand GUT, but I think of it as simply* physical laws that are TRUE and fit each other, as one equation.
That would be usefull, lead to great understanding, cool technology, and make scientist exstatic.
And yes I think that is very likely to happen if current pace of research is kept up.

I do not belive in source code, as in something you can edit** by having the right hardware.

*ok not simple, it will be hard work
**have I been reading too much SF

[Vox Humana]

I do not belive in source code, as in something you can edit** by having the right hardware.


Sorry for the confusion - I was speaking metaphorically, and did not mean to imply that we could modify the laws of physics like we modify computer programs.