The new religion of the sacred string

I had to wait for the official publication date for my copy of Hawking and Mlodinow’s  The Grand Design.  It had been much heralded in the press. “The universe was created by itself - not by God, says Stephen Hawking” is the headline in the Daily Mirror, stating he had changed his mind since writing A brief history of time.  As I understand it neither statement is exactly true, or perhaps I should say presents a wholly reliable model, of the thinking of Britain’s best known scientist.

As a physicist who stopped researching in 1978 I find the book a very good read, easy and accessible but I am somewhat doubtful if a wider audience will find all of it thus. As one might expect from the pen (or speech synthesizer) of somebody who seems to buy completely into modernism there is an assurance or perhaps arrogance throughout.  Very early on we learn “Philosophy is dead” along with God one supposes. 

The inexorable advance of the scientific models against the god’s of the gaps is, as so often the case, extrapolated to supposedly demolish all theism. There is nothing new in this and Prof. Dawkins would no doubt say a loud amen in the temple of fundamentalist atheism.  Keith Ward and others ably counter these claims if Hawking and Dawkins are willing to allow them to speak from their death beds.

Hawking’s main thesis seems to be that we now have at least a candidate for a complete theory of everything.  M-theory, a collection of so called string theories allow the four fundamental forces of nature to be combined into a single model.  Physicists have had a good measure of success combining electromagnetism (compass needles and rubbed balloons sticking to walls), the strong force which holds atoms together and the weak force which explains why some atoms decay.  They have struggled for decades to include gravity in their models.  When you feel a heavy object falling on ones foot it is perhaps surprising to learn that for a physicist gravity is a weak force.  Experimentally attempts to tie it down in a consistent way with the other forces have proved illusive.  M-theory, according to Hawking is a theoretical answer. 

However what we are offered is a model which cannot be tested experimentally.  The model may be successful but it can only be successful on paper and in the minds of those few chosen individuals who can do the mathematics.    Come to think of it that rings a few bells in a discipline much nearer to home.

A noble prize winning physicist Sheldon Glashow was so upset when Harvard University started a string theory group that he resigned from the establishment.  He says

“The string theorists have a theory that appears to be consistent and is very beautiful, very complex, and I don't understand it. It gives a quantum theory of gravity that appears to be consistent but doesn't make any other predictions. That is to say, there ain't no experiment that could be done nor is there any observation that could be made that would say, "You guys are wrong." The theory is safe, permanently safe. I ask you, is that a theory of physics or a philosophy?”

One is tempted to say philosophy is dead long live the philosophers!

But there are serious questions posed by modern physics which the church needs to address.  Have we a theology of Creation which is consistent with the experimentally proven successes of physics?  Quantum theory states that ultimately things are governed by probability not certainty.  How does this impact on the outworking of the sovereignty and providence of God?  Of course some must engage with these issues; we must not shrink from them.

When I left Experimental Physics to take up employment in engineering I learned pragmatism in applying science.  My science had to be useful to solve engineering problems to make things efficient, or cheaper or more reliable. As I now start my ordained ministry it seems to me theology needs to be practical.  The useful theological models are the ones that are readily applied in ministry.

Of course in the creed the Early Fathers got there long ago.  God is first my Father before he is my Creator.  The primary model which holds everything together is relational.  Doing should spring from being God’s child.