The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

  Mr. Lim nodded his thanks and sat down, even more confused than before. He wasn’t the only one lost. The majority of individuals who attempted to follow the conversation displayed bewildered looks.

  “Don’t worry too much about the details,” Darian said. “This is not easy to convey in words, and it’s an awful lot for you to absorb in one short session. I know this isn’t a common or obvious way to think about the universe.

  “The best way to get a sense of it is by asking how a universe of virtual particles would behave. Once you see that the only way to go from the virtual to the real is through resonance effects of adjacent particles, you will realize that all matter, forces, and fields can be explained through this mechanism.

  “When you finish your classes next year, I hope you’ll join my graduate seminar to see how the math works, Mr. Lim. I think you’ll find it much easier to grasp when you can see it laid out in the formulas.” Darian smiled, encouragingly he hoped, and was rewarded with an enthusiastic nod and ear-to-ear grin from Mr. Lim.

  “I believe we have a question from the other hall,” said Dr. Pratt. “Theater 3, your question, please?”

  The monitor displayed a thirty-something woman with lustrous brown hair and fashionable attire. She reached awkwardly for the microphone being offered to her by a theater assistant. “But…but isn’t it all….” Her voice faltered as she spoke into it, as if she was surprised by her own sound. Feedback squealed through the speakers in both halls. The assistant winced and pulled the microphone to an inch away from the woman’s mouth. He gestured to her to begin again.

  She cleared her throat, and her eyes darted to the group sitting next to her. Several severe-looking men along the row bobbed their heads in stern encouragement. She returned her focus to the speaker and started again.

  “Dr. Leigh, your ideas are rather fantastical, invoking things that sound like fairy tales, particles that no one can see, the whole universe springing into existence by random chance, a reality field. It all sounds so…unbelievable, and so unbelievably complicated.”

  She took a shaky breath as Darian and the rest of the audience waited for a question.

  “My question is, why should I believe your complex and incredible story instead of simply believing that the Lord God made it all? The story of creation as told in the Bible makes a whole lot more sense to me.” She looked around the audience, pleading with her eyes for people to join her in the firm and comforting belief in her God.

  Back in the other hall, Darian composed himself. “Your question contains so many assumptions, and it is so steeped in ignorance, that it is difficult for me to answer in the short amount of time that we have here.”

  The audible intake of breath and the hurt, angry look on the woman’s face in the monitor made him realize that his reply must have come across too harsh. He rushed to repair the damage, for both their sakes.

  “What I meant is that in order to really understand the theory, one would need a lifetime of studying mathematics and physics. You are ignorant only in the sense that you lack knowledge in these areas of study, perhaps in science altogether. Sadly the word ‘ignorant’ has become so clouded with emotion in modern use that people are offended when it’s used to describe them.”

  The audience watched the woman on the screen turn to her neighbor and mouth something. Darian's lattice had no trouble reading her lips. He nodded in response as if she had spoken to him directly.

  "For the rest of the audience’s benefit, the speaker commented—to her neighbor's approval—that she does not ‘believe’ in science.” The woman looked simultaneously chagrined and embarrassed.

  “Well, folks, if it were legal, I could duplicate my neural lattice within their brains so that both she and her neighbors could benefit from sufficient understanding of scientific knowledge to properly judge whether or not it is believable. But let’s see if we can demonstrate that without such a drastic approach.

  “Is science just another belief system in an essentially subjective universe? I think that is the essence of the question. Certainly it is a kind of belief system, a belief that the universe is real, that it works through definable and reliable laws of nature, and that these physical laws can be shown through data. We might call this belief system empirical physicalism.

  “But even magical versions of the universe behave according to definable and reliable rules. Pantheistic magic, for example, has rules for invocations. The magic of the Abrahamic God also operates according to rules. The main rule for that particular form of magic is that God must will it; if so, the universe bends to God’s will.

  “A number of philosophers and writers have posited that the universe is not real, that we are all asleep in some greater outside universe. Some philosophies even suggest that our lives in this universe are just fractions of our real lives in the greater universe, that a life here is but one night's dream in the true universe. This is one of the models behind the idea of reincarnation, and it has a certain appeal. The biggest problem I see is this: if we have no way to know if this universe is real, how could we be sure that life in the greater universe is real and not just another dream in an even greater universe? Is it just dreams all the way up? How would that even work?

  “Then science comes along. Science is built from our common experience that the universe works in a predictable way according to well-defined rules: the laws of nature. In the early history of humanity, many of these rules were too complex for us to perceive. We could explain that wood was something that burned, while rocks didn’t; that was easy. But the coming and going of storms, the cause of lightning, and so on, those were too complicated for our early minds.

  “We invented gods, hundreds or even thousands of them, to explain what we perceived as the capriciousness of natural behavior. Over time, we started to understand the workings of more and more things, and the ancient gods died off. I don’t mean literally, because they never really existed. We just stopped turning to them as a way to explain natural occurrences.

  “Nature is complex and it begets complex science. At a certain point, the complexity of scientific knowledge overwhelmed the ability of the human mind to grasp. So we specialized. Physicists used their understanding of electron movement in semiconductors to invent things like transistors. Mathematicians invented ways to represent and manipulate information, and computers were developed. Biologists and biochemists gleaned an understanding of the chemical basis of life and became capable of engineering new organisms.

  “Faced with the overwhelming complexity of nature, and with the sheer volume of the knowledge being amassed by scientists, many people turned back to an older and simpler view of the universe for relief. That view is the ancient one where the magical powers of God determine how everything works.

  “But the scientific approach to understanding the universe isn’t just any belief system. Its essence is pragmatic; it works. It just works. Throughout history, once we achieved significant and correct understanding of natural phenomena, we were able to use that understanding to do things. We could build automobiles, airplanes, submarines, computers, the internet, insect-resistant crops, nuclear bombs, and so on.

  "Where we were temporarily ignorant of the functioning of something, such as, say, cancer in the early part of this century, we prayed to our old God or gods to help us. Sometimes, prayer seemed to work and we attributed the healing to divine intervention. We now understand many of the causes of cancer, and we are able to reliably and predictably cure it. Cancer is no longer in the realm of the gods. Like so many other areas of ignorance before, it has fallen to a scientific, natural understanding of the universe.

  “We don’t need a God or gods in order to understand the universe, though it may be beyond the intelligence of unaided, individual humans. No, what we need is to elevate the level of intelligence in humans so that we can all better understand the universe. Although it is vast, majestic, and complex—and we might not be able to understand every little thing that happens within—i
t is still a natural universe with natural laws. It can be understood.

  “We used to think God moved the planets and put the stars in their place in the sky. Then Newton and Einstein helped us to see that astronomy was explained by gravity, and our magical explanations of the universe retreated to the realm of biology.

  “We used to invoke godly ‘vital spirits’ to explain the animation of life and inheritance. But Darwin showed that inheritance along with competition to survive and reproduce could explain the development of new species. Then Watson, Crick, and Franklin, among others, showed that DNA was the basis of inheritance, and it became obvious that biology was really just complex chemistry.

  “We used to think that life could not have spontaneously begun in the primordial ooze that was Earth. And then, just a few years ago, Barholt showed us how life can spring from wet, salty puddles, with no other explanation than chemistry and thermodynamics.

  “Our God-based rationalizations have steadily retreated as scientific theories of natural phenomena have advanced. Today, God is mostly only invoked within the scientific community to explain the existence of the human soul and the creation of the universe.

  “I’m certain that advances made in artificial intelligence over the next few years, perhaps by someone in this room today, will challenge the magical explanation of the human soul.

  “Very soon we will be able to create the software that will show intelligence is an emergent property of organized, neural-like systems, whether those neurons are biological, electronic, or spintronic. I predict that within a hundred years we will develop synthetic intelligences whose humanity we will be unable to deny.

  “Even the very laws of nature are close to becoming something we can manipulate through science and technology. The work being done by my group will show these physical laws have a perfectly natural origin, that no magical or supernatural explanation is required to explain them.

  “The theory we are developing will point the way to a deeper understanding of how our natural laws evolved among the original bits of the universe. It will give us a chance to vary these laws in a small, local section of the universe, and see how different sets of natural laws interact. This work could lead the way to some major breakthroughs: limitless energy, smarter computers, faster-than-light travel to places that only our distant descendants will know.

  “Personally, I find a universe that evolved naturally is much more exhilarating than a universe created by an all-powerful being to celebrate His glory. I would hope that the rest of you would find it equally exciting.”

  To Darian’s surprise, applause broke out among about a third of the audience members. The remainder sat, frowning, with crossed arms and disapproving glares.

  “Ahem,” Dr. Pratt broke in after a few seconds. “I see we have exceeded the time allowed for the first half of the Café. We’ll take one more question before the break and then enjoy a fifteen-minute recess.

  Pratt scanned the room looking for the last questioner. He pointed to an older gentleman sitting halfway back in the lecture theater, whose hand was barely raised. “Yes, you, sir, the gentleman in the striped shirt,” he said and directed one of the floor runners to deliver a microphone to the selected audience member.

  Darian waited patiently as the man fiddled with the microphone. The clumsy collusion between the host and the planted questioner could not have been clearer if he had received a script in advance of the Café.

  “Reverend LaMontagne,” Darian announced for the benefit of anyone who might not have recognized the former statesman and church leader being invited to speak. “I was wondering if you might weigh in on the discussion. Welcome.”

  The Reverend was only moderately surprised at being recognized by the professor. The holy man’s reputation was much larger in The New Confederacy than in Pacifica. Still, his vocal support of a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible, and of its use in government and education, led to his image appearing in many news stories across popular media around the English-speaking world.

  “Thank you for a most interesting presentation, Dr. Leigh,” LaMontagne began. “I only have two very brief questions for you, if I may. First, I’d like to know what you think is the purpose of it all. Why, of all possible universes, was this one, which is so attuned to human life, the one that came into existence? Second, without the guiding hand of our Lord and His son, Jesus Christ, how are we to know right from wrong? Thank you.” He handed the microphone back to the waiting assistant.

  “Short questions frequently lead to long answers,” replied Darian. “But I’m sure everyone would like to get to the refreshments and the restrooms so I’ll try to keep it brief, and if anyone cares to continue, we can discuss it further during or after the break.

  “Your first question, why this world, and what is the purpose of it all, alludes to an anthropocentric view of the universe and of our Earth. Some people believe everything was designed for the optimal existence of life or, more precisely, of mankind. From this perspective, inevitably follows the argument that, because this is the only human-friendly planet we know, it must have been created by God expressly for humanity. This belief seems to have plagued a great many philosophers and even a few physicists over the past several hundred years. Unfortunately, it is based on a faulty assumption.

  “The vast majority of the universe, and of the potentially habitable part of this planet, is actually not amenable to life, certainly not to human life. Indeed, it is quite hostile. Most of the universe is what we think of as empty; it’s in a vacuum flooded with various wavelengths of radiation, including light.

  “The anthropocentric argument would carry a lot more weight if humans or other intelligent life were found throughout space or even inside the stars, since they comprise much more volume than Earth-like planets.

  “If the universe had been at all intelligently designed for the purpose of life and of humans, it would have made much more sense to increase the habitable surface area by breaking the planets into smaller pieces, like asteroids. However, the weak gravity of asteroid-sized planetoids is insufficient to hold air or water on the surface, and so life becomes restricted to the planets.

  “Even on Earth, life inhabits only a thin layer along the surface; it does not infiltrate most of the available volume. Life is only suited for extremely specialized environments found in an extremely small percent of the universe.

  “If one wanted to claim that God created this vast universe but only placed life and humanity on the thinnest layer of a single inconsequential planet going round a nondescript star near the edge of an unremarkable galaxy among the hundreds of billions of galaxies in this part of the universe just so that we'd know our importance to Him, that is a very different claim from the anthropocentric one.

  “If that were the case, then God would have had to think humans exceptionally vain and stupid to require such an enormous waste of space just to bring home a simple point.

  “As for the purpose of it all, when I make something—let's say I build a house—I assign it a rationale. It could be to shelter me, to sell for money, or so on. Its purpose is given by its creator, me, in this case.

  “Your first question assumes the universe has a Creator, who built it for His own purpose. If the universe simply evolved from the chaos that preceded it, it has no intrinsic purpose given by a nonexistent Creator. It simply is.

  “Now, can we, as intelligent beings, decide on living our lives with purpose? Sure. We’re able to decide what skills and talents we have, what we like and dislike, what meaning we attach to our activities. As well, we have a wide variety of societal and cultural influences to help us decide how to build our lives with purpose. We decide our purpose, each individual for him or her own self.

  “Which brings me to your second question: How are we to know right from wrong? There are many moralities possible without God. Secular humanists and moral philosophers of many stripes have addressed this issue for centuries.

  “Moral codes, a sense
of right and wrong, pre-existed Christianity, and even the Old Testament. Christianity overlaid many of its practices and celebrations onto the earlier pagan worship and events.

  “The fact that societies without the Christian God, or any gods at all for that matter, were capable of arriving at moral codes not too different from those of the Old or New Testaments would suggest that morality may have other bases besides the Christian God. We don't have time to go into evolutionary sociobiology here today, but many scholars have written about it.

  “Instead, I’d like to suggest that the universe encodes moral laws just as much as it encodes physical laws. Universal moral laws apply more so to the species as a whole rather than to isolated individuals

  “The fact that there are biologically unbreakable moral laws at the species level is as evident as the physical laws that we readily accept. One example might be: ‘Thou shall not eat all your young.’ Clearly, this law cannot be broken by all members of any mortal, sexually-reproducing species if that species is to survive. Just as one cannot jump off a cliff in defiance of the law of gravity, all members of a species cannot defy the moral law, ‘thou shall not eat all thy young,’ and survive.

  “Notice how nature enforces moral law. When moral law is broken by a critical number of a species, that species becomes extinct. The physical punishment for breaking a natural moral law is much harsher than that of eternal damnation in a burning hell specified by Christianity. It is the subsequent non-existence of the species.

  “Natural moral laws are similar to the laws of quantum mechanics in many ways. At the subatomic scale, individual particles are capable of all kinds of strange behaviors that seem to break the laws of nature.

  “Take electron tunneling, for example. An electron seems to jump across an insulating barrier. One instant, it’s on one side of the barrier; and the next instant, it’s on the other side without ever traveling through the barrier. It appears to defy natural laws of motion.