At a meeting in Leningrad in December 1948, Soviet astronomers affirmed the need to fight against the “reactionary-idealistic” theory of a “primeval atom.” Support for this theory, later dubbed the “Big Bang” by one of its fiercest critics, would, the Soviets claimed, help clericalism.Footnote ¹ While such anxieties might seem astonishing today, they may have seemed plausible in the 1940s, especially since the theory had first been proposed by a Catholic priest, Father Georges Lemaître. Furthermore, while Lemaître himself was careful to avoid drawing theological inferences, the association of his theory with the religious doctrine of Creation, especially by Pope Pius XII in 1951, helped to motivate the search for alternative approaches such as the “steady-state” theory.Footnote ² In recent years, by contrast, the perception has been growing that the Big Bang theory has ceased to be offensive to atheist sensibilities. It is claimed that the Big Bang can now be accommodated safely within a self-sufficient system of natural causes, possibly by embedding the universe within an infinitely larger and eternal “multiverse.” Indeed, just a few months ago, the media reported with enthusiasm the assertions made by Stephen Hawking in his latest book, that contemporary physics has solved the mysteries of the Big Bang making recourse to God obsolete.Footnote ³

The part of Robert J. Spitzer's New Proofs for the Existence of God that responds to these developments is timely and excellent. Spitzer collates research that shows not only that the mysteries of the Big Bang have not been solved but that certain problems related to “fine-tuning” have become even more intractable than in Lemaître's day. To picture what is meant by a fine-tuning problem, one can imagine that all the parameters of the universe, such as the speed of light in a vacuum, the gravitational constant, electromagnetic coupling, and the masses of the elementary particles, are the settings of the dials of a “cosmic control panel.” Contemporary physics implies that if the settings of these dials were to be nudged very slightly, then we would not be here to ponder the mysteries of creation. To cite some examples from Spitzer's book, if gravity or the weak force (two of the four known forces of nature) were to be varied in strength by one part in 10⁴⁰, then the expansion of the universe would either be too explosive for galaxies or the universe would have collapsed. If a certain combination of the constants of gravity, electromagnetism and the ratio of electron to proton mass were varied by about one part in 10³⁹, no main sequence stars like our sun could form. If a precise nuclear resonance of the carbon atom did not match the combined energy of beryllium and a colliding helium nucleus, while avoiding a resonance with oxygen and helium, then there would be almost no carbon, the basis of life as we know it. Most dramatically, calculations by Roger Penrose of the entropy of the universe have suggested that our universe is in an absurdly precise state, compared to the available range of possible values. Indeed, as Spitzer points out, simply to write down the odds for this arrangement happening by chance, using ten-point type without exponents, would itself fill up a large portion of the observable universe.

Two major lines of research have developed in recent decades to try to account for these numbers without recourse to divine intervention or unbelievable good luck. The first attempt, covered briefly in Spitzer's book in a postscript by Bruce Gordon, has been to try to reduce the range of alternative possibilities for the parameters of the cosmic control panel by developing a grand unified theory of everything. Success in this approach would be some explanation that shows that the dials on the panel, which appear to be absurdly fine-tuned, are more or less determined by some deeper, impersonal principle. Indeed, the holy grail of this research would be to show that the universe could not have been other than it is, dispelling the illusion of fine-tuning completely. In recent decades, most of the research along these lines has focused on string theory, which held out the early promise of uniting gravity, quantum mechanics, and the fundamental particles of nature within a single univocal framework. In fact, it is a development of string theory, dubbed “M-theory,” that Hawking champions in his recent book as having the potential to explain everything, rendering philosophy and God redundant.Footnote ⁴ Yet string theory has come under increasing criticism by physicists themselves in recent years, an issue mentioned only briefly in Spitzer's work but which has been discussed in detail in two influential books by Peter Woit, Not Even Wrong, and Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics.Footnote ⁵ The main problem is that string theory is not a testable theory as such, but a possible approach for constructing a vast number of diverse theories. This diversity means that string theory in its present form lacks predictive power, one implication of which is that its capacity for limiting the range of settings on the cosmic control panel is practically nil.

The second major attempt, often combined with some grand unified theory, has been to propose that the observable universe is embedded within an unseen larger reality, often called the “multiverse”. The aim of this approach is to use certain features of the hypothetical multiverse to constrain the range of possible parameters on the cosmic control panel of the observable universe or else to increase indefinitely the number of attempts that can be made at spinning the dials to obtain these parameters by chance. Spitzer points out, however, that there are several subtle problems with the physical implications of the multiverse hypothesis. First, there is still just one true universe in this hypothesis, if by “universe” we mean the entire domain of physical reality that is in some way connected. Indeed, if the multiverse is not connected in some way to the particular domain that we observe and loosely call the “universe,” then it hard to see how any laws of physics derived in our domain could possibly apply to the multiverse as a whole, thereby breaking the connection between such speculations and physical science entirely. If, however, the multiverse is structurally interconnected, and it is possible to extend physics to describe the multiverse, then many problems encountered with the Big Bang theory reappear or even become worse. For example, Spitzer cites recent work by Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin showing that the problem of a singularity encountered when extrapolating back using the standard Big Bang model cannot easily be avoided in a multiverse model either. Furthermore, if the singular Big Bang is replaced by a smooth transition to a different domain of the multiverse, then the problem of entropy highlighted by Penrose arguably becomes worse. While such findings do not, of course, prove that the only remaining solution to fine-tuning issues is divine invention, what they do show is how far we are from resolving such issues in terms of a comprehensive theory of physics. So claims, even by eminent scientists, that we have solved the mysteries of the Big Bang are simply nonsense.

Nevertheless, while Spitzer's treatment of these issues shows a grasp of contemporary cosmology that is remarkable in a work of theology, the philosophical aspects of the book are considerably weaker. It would have been good, for example, to have seen some consideration of the philosophical challenge of quantifying fine-tuning, especially in the absence of a theory about the range or granularity of the fundamental constants. The most problematic aspects, however, are Spitzer's claims in chapter five regarding the nature of time and their theistic implications. According to Spitzer, there is a certain aggregated amount of “real time,” which is finite, made up of some tiny but non-zero minimum intervals, and intrinsic to changeable reality. He also claims that the universe itself is conditioned by this “real time,” even adding that the age of the universe is “extrinsically measurable as a whole.” On the basis that the past time of the universe is finite, Spitzer restates William Craig's version of the Kalam cosmological argument to show that there must be a First Cause that is not conditioned by time. Spitzer therefore argues that modern physics and pPhotonshilosophy have put the Kalam argument, which was viewed with some suspicion by Thomas Aquinas, on a secure foundation at last.

Spitzer's claims, however, are based on a kind of reification of time as absolute, the precise opposite of Einstein's philosophical insight that time is relative to more fundamental aspects of reality. Indeed, in General Relativity, as in the book of Genesis, it is light rather than time that is more fundamental and time can pass differently for different observers. For example, according to the famous “twins paradox,” my twin brother, who sets off on a journey to a distant star at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light would, when he returns to earth, be younger than I am.Footnote ⁶ Similar relativistic effects explain why atomic clocks taken into space lose their synchronization with their counterparts on earth. Indeed, to give an extreme illustration of the non-absolute nature of time, if one was to hitch a ride with one of the cosmic background photons radiating from the afterglow of the Big Bang and reaching a telescope on earth 13.6 billion years later, from the point of view of an observer on earth, no time at all would have passed as measured by oneself. If photons were capable of personal experience, they would have the unusual privilege of experiencing spatial extension along their direction of travel rather as Boethius defined eternity, namely complete possession all-at-once. So any talk about time “conditioning” all reality ought to carry a health warning. Diverse clocks in the universe will lose synchronization depending on the various exciting things that happen to them, such as accelerating, decelerating, going into orbit or falling into black holes. The various aggregates of “real time” (to use Spitzer's terminology) of these clocks will therefore fail to match up when compared, making the notion that there is a univocal “real time” for the universe as whole rather implausible.

Spitzer very briefly notes and dismisses this problem in a footnote on p. 206, claiming that these differences can be reconciled through the Lorentz transformation. He is right insofar as the observations made by an observer in one reference frame can be reconciled with those of an observer in another reference frame, but how can the transformation be made to the universe as a whole? To put the question another way, by what “clock” can the age of the universe as a whole be measured as opposed to some subset of events within the universe? By Spitzer's own definition, the universe comprises the entire domain of physical reality that is in any way connected, yet such reality must contain all usable clocks. Furthermore, even the most advanced science cannot provide a metric “outside” the universe. When scientists speak of the “age” of the universe, they are really talking of one of two things: either some distant event in the past (such as the universe cooling sufficiently to become transparent to radiation), the time of which can be measured according to some independent metric that remains, in principle, meaningful across the span of such time (such as orbital rotations or oscillations of atoms). Alternatively, they are talking of some mathematical extrapolation back to a singularity (or, possibly, a smoothed out terminus to space-time) and then working forward from that “point.” Nevertheless, the very existence of the multiverse hypothesis shows that extrapolating backwards from the present universe does not give a univocal notion of cosmic age. More fundamentally, as we progress in thought back towards a singularity or terminus, the metrics that we rely on for measuring the passage of time become problematic and it becomes increasingly difficult to treat space and time as a background to which the phenomena of physical laws can be referred. So even if it is possible to construct a consistent mathematical model in which there is a zero point of cosmic time, it would still remain unclear how such a model can continue to be an accurate description of physical reality as the extrapolation approaches this origin.Footnote ⁷

So even Spitzer's assertion that past time, if it cannot be infinite must, of necessity, be finite, turns out to conceal hidden assumptions. To demand that the age of the universe is either finite or infinite presupposes that there is some frame of reference by which ‘“age” is meaningful. Yet the universe, by definition, includes all frames of reference, implying that trying to define the age of the universe absolutely is like asking God what time it is. The question has no meaning in the absence of a relation to something else.Footnote ⁸

Why, then, does Spitzer seem to think that it is meaningful to talk about “real time” as something absolute, even conditioning the universe as a whole? The underlying problem, I suspect, is one that is commonplace in our intellectual culture and is a consequence of the view of science bequeathed to us by Newton. Newton did not “discover” gravity and even claimed, explicitly, that he did not “feign hypotheses” about the cause of gravity. What he did was to redefine the whole scope and enterprise of science, defining certain measurable phenomenical quantities such as position, velocity, and acceleration by reference to a hypothetical space-time background. He then exploited an unusual property of two-body interacting systems, such as the sun and a planet, namely that the behavior of such systems can be integrated to produce time-dependent equations. This technique, which was extremely successful within its limited domain, gave human beings the power to predict and unify an extraordinary range of phenomena. We have been able to model the time-ordered behavior of many kinds of approximate aggregates of two-body systems or perturbations of two-body systems, from the solar system to the electron shells of atoms. Nevertheless, the success of Newton's approach has tended to obscure the many situations where it fails, such as the true three-body system. The problem in such cases is that the “background” of any two members of the three-body system is constantly changing and cannot be abstracted to permit integration. Indeed, even the symmetry of time in two-body systems, according to which past and future directions are physically indistinguishable, breaks down in true three-body or more complex systems (including, for example, living things).Footnote ⁹ Yet the metaphors Newton bequeathed us, such as thinking of time as space-like, and the space-time background itself, have had an incalculable impact on science, philosophy and (by extension) theology. While such metaphors continue to be useful for a great many phenomena, some physicists, such as Lee Smolin, now speculate that we shall need to overcome their influence if we are to make further progress in physics, “We have to find a way to unfreeze time—to represent time without turning it into space.”Footnote ¹⁰ Given that some physicists recognize the limitations of treating time as absolute and space-like, philosophers and theologians should be extremely wary of making claims about an absolute “real time” that conditions the cosmos as a whole.

While the issues above are the most important, interesting and timely matters addressed in Spitzer's book, he covers a number of additional subjects that I must also mention briefly. Chapters three and four present two further metaphysical proofs for God's existence, following, for the most parts, ideas adapted from the Catholic philosopher Bernard Lonergan. My principal concerns with these chapters are twofold. First, they tend to mix concepts drawn from medieval and classical sources with those of contemporary physics, sometimes with insufficient attention to metaphysical differences. Take, for example, Spitzer's adaptation of the medieval Porphyrian tree of being with entities drawn from modern physics. Spitzer claims a reality that is higher on his tree of being is “compatible with” and “inclusive of”' the realities that are below it on the tree of being. To move higher on the tree of being is, according to Spitzer, to be conditioned by fewer restrictions or magnitudes than the realities below. Nevertheless, beyond a few simple examples, this kind of model can quickly run into difficulties. Consider, for example, a human being. Would a human being, comprising a great deal of water, be higher or lower than a water molecule on Spitzer's tree? On one hand, the human being is capable of certain things that a water molecule is not capable of, such as thinking about water molecules, and has arguably more divine characteristics. On the other hand, a human being cannot evaporate and fly through the air like a water molecule, implying that the human being is spatially more restricted than the molecule. A whole is often more than the sum of its parts, and sometimes parts behave differently when integrated into wholes. Therefore the statement that higher realities include realities below them on a tree of being is problematic without a very careful choice of the entities and specification of the criteria for making this choice. My second concern is that there is surprisingly little reference to secondary literature, making Spitzer's definitions rather sui generis. For example, there is a long-established tradition of writing on the notion of “simplicity,”Footnote ¹¹ but Spitzer's definition makes no reference to this tradition or difficulties that have been raised about this notion.

The final section of the book, on the five transcendentals and five human yearnings for the ultimate, is perhaps the weakest part. Spitzer probably tries to cover too many topics, without sufficient reference to the history of scholarship, and glosses over a number of important issues. Spitzer includes, for example, beauty as one of the five transcendentals. In the scholastic tradition, however, beauty is often classified as a pseudo-transcendental, namely goodness perceptible to the senses, and is often regarded as slightly suspect as a way to the divine. Evil can sometimes take on the guise of beauty whereas goodness sometimes has no looks to attract our eyes.Footnote ¹² In the final chapter, the text includes certain optimistic but sometimes rather unrealistic claims. Spitzer states, for example, that “philosophers have long recognized the human desire for perfect justice or goodness” (p. 268). That claim might surprise Aristotle, who observed that most human beings are slavish in their tastes and that many in high places share the tastes of Sardanapallus (Nicomachean Ethics, I, 5). Plato also claims that prisoners in the cave, in other words the vast majority of human beings in the world, would harm or even try to kill someone descending to help them from the world of light (Republic VII, 517a). While there may be a sense in which Spitzer is right, a desire for perfect justice or goodness seems to be a somewhat refined taste. This point ought to be addressed rather than an assertion made that runs contrary to everyday experience.

In conclusion, Spitzer's book is excellent in terms of its coverage of the state of cosmological science and is worth having for the first part alone. The book is more problematic, however, in its application of philosophy to science, especially regarding the nature of time, and the way in which it sometimes embeds entities from modern physics into more classical metaphysical frameworks. The last few chapters are, at best, a brief survey of a great many diverse topics and should be read with caution.Footnote ¹³