“The ultimate free lunch is the universe.”
In the second part of the nineteenth century, pioneering astronomer and a key figure in the Figuring movement Maria Mitchell remarked, “Every formula which defines a law of nature is a song of praise to God.” She was thinking about science, spirituality, and the desire for truth in humanity. Since then, this issue has been put to every great scientist, whether out of personal restlessness or in response to public demand.
In response to a young girl’s inquiry on whether scientists pray, Einstein addressed the issue. Because we are a part of nature and hence a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve, according to Max Planck, the inventor of the quantum theory, science is unable to fully explain nature. In his sharp difference between subjective and objective reality, his colleague Nobel laureate and the founder of quantum theory Niels Bohr opposed the sentiment, pointing out that while religions have always addressed the former, science addresses the latter, which is measurable and so knowable. Bohr’s revolutionary scientific theories had a significant influence on Wolfgang Pauli, who came to the conclusion that attempts to reconcile science and religion “would always be full of pitfalls and one can fall down on both sides.”
To address this persistent question without falling into the most pernicious trap of all — that of artificial compatibilism — requires a mind of uncommon courage and insight. It requires the ability to take a clear position without fear of offending others, then to thoughtfully and sensitively explain the basis of that position while methodically dismantling every reflexive argument against it.
This is what Stephen Hawking accomplishes in his final book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, a collection of ten enormous questions Hawking was asked frequently throughout his life by children and elders, businessmen and politicians, men and women young and old attending his prolific lectures and public appearances, with answers drawn from his extensive personal archive of correspondence, notes, draughts, interviews, and essays. The book’s opening poses the question that has rumbled through humanity’s chest ever since science first confronted superstition: “Is there a God?” It was written with the assistance of Hawking’s family and academic peers during his lifetime but was only completed after his passing. Proceeds from the book go to the Stephen Hawking Foundation and the Motor Neurone Disease Association.
Hawking, who many people believe to be the greatest scientist since Einstein and whose stardust was buried in Westminster Abbey alongside Darwin and Newton, uses his deadpan humor to put the question in a personal context before using the fulcrum of his brilliant mind to pivot into the serious answer.
For many years, it was thought that persons with disabilities, like myself, were under a divine curse. Well, it’s possible that I’ve offended someone up there, but I’d prefer to believe that the natural rules of the world can explain everything in a different way. Like me, you probably think that there are laws that are constantly followed in science. You are free to claim that the laws are God’s creation, but that is more of a definition of God than it is a demonstration of his reality.
He expands on his earlier thoughts on the meaning of the world and adds: “With an eye to the discovery, which began in antiquity and concluded with Kepler and Galileo, that “the heavens” are in fact a complex universe regulated by discoverable and discernible physical laws.”
“Humanity’s greatest accomplishment, in my opinion, has been the discovery of these laws since they will determine whether or not we require a god to explain the cosmos. These rules of nature are what we now refer to as. What actually happens in the past, present, and future is described by the laws of nature. The tennis ball always travels exactly where it is predicted to go. There are also a lot of additional laws in play here. They control everything, from how the players’ muscles generate the shot’s energy to how quickly the grass expands beneath their feet. The fact that these physical principles are not only unalterable but also universal is what matters most. In addition to ball flight, they also apply to planetary motion and every other aspect of the universe. The rules of nature cannot be broken, unlike laws enacted by humans; for this reason, they are both extremely strong and, from a religious perspective, divisive.”
God could be thought of being the physical manifestation of natural laws. But most people wouldn’t consider this to be God. They refer to a being that resembles a human being and can be friendly. That seems highly improbable when you consider the huge vastness of the cosmos and how insignificant and accidental human life is within it.
Knowing the laws of nature means understanding the mind of God, which is how I, like Einstein, refer to the impersonal laws of nature. By the end of this century, I believe we shall understand God’s mind.
Hawking admits that the existence of natural laws still gives leeway for religions to assert their authority over the most important question—how the cosmos and its laws came into being. He responds to the query in a straightforward and meaningful manner. According to scientific laws, “I believe the cosmos started out of nothing spontaneously.”
It turns out that there are only three ingredients required to create an entire universe, despite its complexity and diversity. Imagine that we could include a list of them in a galactic cookbook. What are the three components that we’ll need to create the universe, then? The first is a matter or things with mass. In the ground beneath our feet and in outer space, the matter is present all around us. Rock, ice, dust, and liquids. Huge spirals of stars, each containing billions of suns, and vast clouds of a gas stretch off into the distance.
Energy is the second thing you require. We all understand what energy is, even if we’ve never given it any attention. something we experience each day. You may feel the energy that was produced by a star that is ninety-three million miles away on your face if you look up at the Sun. The mechanisms that maintain the universe active and constantly evolving are powered by energy, which penetrates the entire cosmos.
So, we have both matter and energy. Space is the third element we require to construct a universe. Lots of room. The universe can be described in various ways, including as awesome, beautiful, and violent, yet it cannot be described as being crowded. Everywhere we turn, we see space—plenty and lots of it. stretching out everywhere.
The natural question is where all the matter, energy, and space came from. Until the early 20th century, we were only able to provide mythological cosmogonies as an answer to this question. However, Einstein proved that mass is a form of energy and energy is a form of mass in what is now the most famous equation in human history: E=mc2. As a result, the “cosmic cookbook three” ingredients are reduced to two, leaving only the genesis of space and energy as a remaining mystery. The Big Bang model, which states that the entire universe, with all of its space and energy, ballooned into existence out of the nothingness that preceded it in a single instant around 13.8 billion years ago, is the result of generations of scientists building on one another’s work to provide the solution.
Hawking addressed the profoundly paradoxical idea of creating anything out of nothing, echoing Carl Sagan’s statement that common sense might blind us to the facts of the cosmos fifty years after Nabokov’s poetic warning against common sense:
“After the Second World War, when I was growing up in England, it was a time of austerity. It was explained to us that nothing comes for free. But now, after a lifetime of labor, I believe that you can genuinely obtain the entire cosmos for nothing.”
How an entire, extraordinarily large universe of space and energy can appear out of nothing is the central puzzle of the Big Bang theory. One of the oddest things in our universe holds the key to the solution. The concept of “negative energy” must exist in accordance with the principles of physics.
Let me use a straightforward comparison to help you understand this strange yet important topic. Imagine a man who wishes to transform a level piece of ground into a hill. The universe will be symbolized by the hill. He creates this hill by digging a hole in the earth and filling it with soil. Of course, he’s also creating a hole, which is essentially a negative version of the hill; he’s not just creating a hill. Everything is perfectly balanced since the material that was in the pit has transformed into a hill. This is the underlying idea of what took place in the universe’s creation.
The Big Bang created an enormous amount of positive energy, as well as an equal amount of negative energy. In this approach, the sum of the positive and negative is always zero. It is an additional natural law.
Where then is all this bad vibe today? It can be found in our cosmic recipe’s third ingredient: space. It may seem strange, but space itself is a huge repository of negative energy, according to the laws of nature that govern motion and gravity. These laws are among the oldest in all of science. Enough to guarantee that the total is zero.
I’ll grant that this is difficult to understand unless mathematics is your thing, but it’s true. It’s like a huge storage device, the unending web of billions upon billions of galaxies pressing on each other with the power of gravity. The universe functions as a giant battery that stores negative energy. The mass and energy we observe now represent the good side of things, like the hill. Space is filled with the corresponding hole or the bad side of things.
What does this indicate for our search to determine whether there is a God, then? It implies that there is no need for a God to create the universe if it sums to nothing. The ultimate free lunch is the universe.
We can’t just magically generate an ice cream cone or a long-lost sweetheart in our everyday lives, which is where the wheels of common sense understanding come to a frustrating halt. However, on the subatomic scale that supports our physical reality, things operate differently. Particles appear and disappear at random times and locations under the control of the laws of quantum mechanics, which appear eerily mystical in their manifestation but are actually known and calculable universal laws. Hawking clarifies:
“This has fairly significant implications because we know that the cosmos itself was once very little, possibly smaller than a proton. It implies that the cosmos itself, in all of its astounding size and complexity, may have emerged out of nothing without breaking any known rules of nature. As space itself expanded after that, enormous amounts of energy were liberated, providing a location to store all the negative energy required to balance the books. Of course, the crucial point is brought up once more: Did God design the quantum laws that permitted the Big Bang to take place? In other words, did God create the universe so that it could explode? I don’t want to upset anyone who believes in God, but I believe science offers a better explanation than a supernatural creator.”
Hawking states:
“Imagine a river, flowing down a mountainside. What caused the river? Well, perhaps the rain that fell earlier in the mountains. But then, what caused the rain? A good answer would be the Sun, which shone down on the ocean and lifted water vapor up into the sky and made clouds. Okay, so what caused the Sun to shine? Well, if we look inside we see the process known as fusion, in which hydrogen atoms join to form helium, releasing vast quantities of energy in the process. So far so good. Where does the hydrogen come from? Answer: the Big Bang. But here’s the crucial bit. The laws of nature itself tell us that not only could the universe have popped into existence without any assistance, like a proton, and have required nothing in terms of energy, but also that it is possible that nothing caused the Big Bang. Nothing.”
Hawking concludes with his most direct, personal answer to the universal question:
“It’s my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization: there is probably no heaven and an afterlife either. I think belief in an afterlife is just wishful thinking. There is no reliable evidence for it, and it flies in the face of everything we know in science. I think that when we die we return to dust. But there’s a sense in which we live on, in our influence, and in the genes that we pass on to our children. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful.”
Rather than dispiriting, this lucid awareness of our ephemerality can be the wellspring of our noblest, most deeply spiritual and spiritualizing impulses — a catalyst for finding holiness in the richness of life itself, in the splendor of this peculiar and irreplaceable planet, rooted in the awareness that, in the poetic words of naturalist Sy Montgomery, “our world, and the worlds around and within it, is aflame with shades of brilliance we cannot fathom — and is far more vibrant, far more holy than we could ever imagine.” Hawking channels this orientation of mind and spirit in a stirring passage from the book’s introduction:
“One day, I hope we will know the answers to all these questions. But there are other challenges, other big questions on the planet which must be answered, and these will also need a new generation who are interested and engaged, and have an understanding of science. How will we feed an ever-growing population? Provide clean water, generate renewable energy, prevent and cure disease and slow down global climate change. I hope that science and technology will provide the answers to these questions, but it will take people, human beings with knowledge and understanding, to implement these solutions. Let us fight for every woman and every man to have the opportunity to live healthy, secure lives, full of opportunity and love. We are all time travelers, journeying together into the future. But let us work together to make that future a place we want to visit. Be brave, be curious, be determined, and overcome the odds. It can be done.”
