Introduction
I have been asked to comment
on whether the universe shows signs of having been designed. I don't see how it's possible to talk about
this without having at least some vague idea of what a designer would be like. Any possible universe could be explained as
the work of some sort of
designer. Even a universe that is
completely chaotic, without any laws or regularities at all, could be supposed
to have been designed by an idiot, as Macbeth suggested.
The Question to be
Answered
The question that seems to
me to be worth answering, and perhaps not impossible to answer, is whether the
universe shows signs of having been designed by a deity more or less like those
of traditional monotheistic religions
--- not necessarily a figure
from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but at least some sort of personality,
some intelligence, who created the universe and has some special concern with
life, in particular with human life. I
expect that this is not the idea of a designer held by many here. You may tell me that you are thinking of
something much more abstract, some cosmic spirit of order and harmony, as
Einstein did. You are certainly free to
think that way, but then I don't know why you use words like “designer” or
“God,” except perhaps as a form of protective coloration. It would not surprise me to find that John
Polkinghorne and I agree about what are the interesting questions; where we do
disagree is in the answers.
It used to be obvious that the world was designed by some
sort of intelligence. What else could
account for fire and rain and lightning and earthquakes? Above all, the wonderful capabilities of
living things seemed to point to a creator who had a special interest in
life. Today we understand most of these
things in terms of physical forces acting under impersonal laws. We don't yet know the most fundamental laws,
and we can't work out all the consequences of the laws we do know. The human mind remains extraordinarily
difficult to understand, but so is the weather. We can't predict whether it will rain one month from today, but
we do know the rules that govern the rain, even though we can't always
calculate their consequences. I see
nothing about the human mind any more than about the weather that stands out as
beyond the hope of understanding as a consequence of impersonal laws acting
over billions of years.
Contributed by: Dr. Steven Weinberg
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