Foundations of Physics

"I say 'difficulty' (for naturalism) and not 'refutation' because it is impossible to refute a background belief like naturalism in this way." — Mark Steiner, The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem, 1998¹

Summary

Five articles in this section ask what physical law, entropy, time, quantum events and mathematics are, and which of their features theism explains, which naturalism explains, and where both are silent.  Read together, they reach one overall verdict.

The theistic arguments that survive are real, modest, and cannot be priced.  Each is a form of one fact:  the world is orderly, it can be understood by human minds, and it began in a special state.  Theism expects such a world.  Naturalism can accept it, but only as a brute fact.  No argument in the section is decisive for God, because in every case nobody can say how probable the fact would be without God.  There is no agreed measure over possible laws, possible starting states, or possible fits between mathematics and the world.

The decisive results in this section refute overclaims, on both sides.  The creationist argument that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics is dead.  The naturalist claim that physics shows the universe came from nothing is a misdescription, and a naturalist cosmologist says so.  Several other popular apologetic arguments also fail:  Werner Gitt's "laws of information," the claim that consciousness creates reality, the claim that God needs quantum chance in order to act, and the claim that Gödel's theorems prove anything about God.

Physics is silent on three large questions.  It does not decide whether only the present exists, which interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, or what numbers are.  On each, Christian theism has a coherent position on more than one side.

The five articles, one line each:

1. Laws of Nature, Causation, and Information. The uniformity of nature fits theism better than naturalism, a real but modest argument. Induction has no proof on any view. Gitt's laws of information fail, and only Stephen Meyer's narrower inference about the origin of the genetic code survives.
2. Entropy and the Arrow of Time. Evolution does not violate the second law: sunlight pays for all life on earth within weeks. The universe's low-entropy beginning is real and unexplained by physics, and it fits creation without proving it.
3. Time, Relativity, and Divine Eternity. Relativity shows that clocks in motion disagree, not that the future already exists. A timeless God fits the block universe and a God in time fits a real present. Time probably began.
4. Quantum Mechanics and Divine Action. Bell tests rule out local hidden variables but cannot choose among interpretations, so physics has not shown that nature is random. Chance is not freedom. God's action needs no quantum gap, and quantum cosmology's "nothing" is not nothing.
5. Mathematics and God. The fit between human mathematics and the world is better expected if one mind made both, but nobody can say how much better. What numbers are remains open, abstract objects threaten God's aseity only on uncreated Platonism, and Gödel's theorems settle nothing about God.

Verdict.  The foundations of physics favour theism modestly and cumulatively, not decisively.  They also remove several arguments that both apologists and their critics still use.  The most concrete result for theism is the low-entropy beginning, because it is a measured fact of physics rather than a reading of one.  The strongest single correction to apologists is the retirement of the second-law argument against evolution.  None of it bears on the age of the earth.

Part 1: Laws of nature, causation, and information

Laws of Nature, Causation, and Information asks what a law of nature is, whether laws need a lawgiver, why it is reasonable to expect them to hold tomorrow, and what "information" means when creationists say matter cannot produce it.

The lawgiver argument is not a pun on the word "law."  At full strength, in Richard Swinburne and John Foster, it argues from the uniformity of nature itself:  theism explains it by one agent's constant will, and every rival view must take it as a brute fact.  Swinburne states the limit of science plainly:  science could not explain "why the most fundamental natural laws of all hold.  Either these are brute facts about the world, or they have an explanation of a different" kind.²  The best naturalist replies, from Helen Beebee, Barry Loewer and Sean Carroll, stop coherently at the laws.  So the argument is real but modest:  theism expects an orderly world, and naturalism merely permits one.

Induction has no proof on any view.  Theism and the necessitation account of laws give a reason to expect uniformity;  a pure regularity account gives none.  On information, the article finds Gitt's laws circular, because he builds a sender's goal into his definition, or contradicted by observed gains of function when purpose is read as function.  What survives is Meyer's narrower claim that intelligence is "the only known cause of specified information (at least starting from a nonbiological source)."³  That is an inference about the origin of life, as strong as the failure of its alternatives, and never a law of nature.

Part 2: Entropy and the arrow of time

Entropy and the Arrow of Time tests the oldest physics argument in the creation debate and finds it dead.  The earth is not an isolated system.  It exports at least 4.2 × 10¹⁴ joules per kelvin of entropy to space every second, and every honest estimate of what life needs, from Daniel Styer's corrected 3 J/K per second to Emory Bunn's deliberately inflated ceiling, is paid by that export in a year or less, most of them in seconds to days.  Henry Morris conceded the energy budget in 1974, Granville Sewell now says his work does not argue that evolution violates the second law, and Answers in Genesis's physics page admits creationists have no rigorous entropy-based hypothesis.  What survives is true and agreed by both sides:  energy does nothing useful without a mechanism to direct it.  Whether unguided chemistry and selection supply that mechanism is a question for biology and probability.

The universe's low-entropy beginning is a different matter.  Today's observable universe holds about 10¹⁰⁴ units of entropy, measured in Boltzmann's constant, against a possible 10¹²³, and Roger Penrose put the specialness of the beginning at a factor of 10¹⁰¹²³.  Richard Feynman, David Albert and Robert Wald agree that it has to be assumed rather than derived from known dynamics, and chance fluctuation does not explain it.  It is what a created universe would show.  It does not prove creation, because Penrose's number is a ratio of volumes rather than a probability, it is computed inside the big bang model, and Carroll argues that the excess of low entropy counts against design.  By itself it shows that the present ordered era began a finite time ago, not that everything began, and it says nothing about the age of the earth.

Part 3: Time, relativity, and divine eternity

Time, Relativity, and Divine Eternity asks whether relativity shows that the future already exists, whether God is inside time or outside it, and whether time began.  Relativity's measured content is not in dispute:  moving clocks disagree, and so do observers' judgments of which distant events are happening "now."  The argument from there to the block universe, made by C. W. Rietdijk and Hilary Putnam, needs a premise no experiment tests, that every observer's "now" is equally real.  A presentist can hold that one frame's "now" is the real one, as Hendrik Lorentz did.  John Bell said that "the pre-Einstein position of Lorentz and Poincare, Larmor and Fitzgerald was perfectly coherent, and is not inconsistent with relativity theory."⁴  The block universe is the simpler reading of the physics.  Presentism pays for a real present with a preferred frame that nobody can detect.

Each model of God pairs with a theory of time.  The classical timeless God of Augustine, Boethius and Aquinas fits the block universe.  The God in time of Nicholas Wolterstorff, Swinburne and William Lane Craig needs a real present, and with it the preferred frame.  Physics cannot choose between the models because it cannot choose between the theories of time.  Foreknowledge has an answer on either model, though open theism is ruled out by the block universe.  The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem and Alexander Vilenkin's judgment make it probable that time began, which fits creation without proving it.  Both theories of time also allow a young universe, so the young-earth dispute between Phillip Dennis and Jason Lisle is a small version of the same choice.

Part 4: Quantum mechanics and divine action

Quantum Mechanics and Divine Action separates what the experiments show from what the interpretations add.  The 2015 Bell tests in Delft, Vienna and Boulder closed the door on local hidden variables.  They left open nonlocal theories such as Bohm's, many worlds, and superdeterminism, and no experiment yet chooses among Copenhagen, many worlds, Bohm, collapse theories and QBism.  So physics has not shown that nature is random:  on Bohm's theory every outcome is fixed, and on many worlds every outcome happens.  What quantum mechanics has done is end the claim that physics proves the world is a closed deterministic machine.

On the claims built on top, the article is deflationary in both directions.  Chance is not freedom, though every Bell test assumes experimenters who choose their settings.  Consciousness-causes-collapse is consistent with the data and held by almost no one, and Orch OR is under heavy experimental pressure.  God acting through quantum outcomes, as Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy and Thomas Tracy propose, is coherent, but it rests on a contested interpretation, worsens the problem of evil, and answers a worry about "intervention" that, as Alvin Plantinga shows, physics never raised.  Quantum cosmology's "creation from nothing" begins from laws and a space of possible universes.  Carroll, a naturalist, writes that "come into existence out of nothing" "is a misleading way of putting it, as it implies a temporal process that begins with nothing and ends with the universe."⁵

Part 5: Mathematics and God

Mathematics and God asks why mathematics invented at a desk keeps describing the world, what numbers are, whether numbers that exist on their own would rival God, and what Gödel's theorems show.  Eugene Wigner, a Nobel physicist who drew no religious conclusion, called "the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences" "something bordering on the mysterious."⁶  Ivor Grattan-Guinness's reply, that much mathematics was built to solve physical problems, covers much of applied mathematics but not the cases Wigner stressed, such as complex numbers.  Mark Steiner's version is the strongest:  physicists found modern laws by following mathematical analogies chosen for human reasons of beauty and convenience, and the analogies worked.  He calls this "a difficulty for naturalism, because what the evidence suggests is, on the contrary, that nature looks 'user friendly' to human inquiry," and not a refutation.¹

The article's verdict is that the fit is better expected if one mind made both the world and the knower, that nobody can say how much better, and that the argument cannot tell the God of the Bible from a deist's god.  Platonism, nominalism and structuralism all remain open, each with a hard problem it has not solved.  Abstract objects conflict with God's aseity only if they exist uncreated and independent of him;  divine conceptualism, Craig's anti-realism and Peter van Inwagen's reading of the creed each keep orthodoxy coherent at a cost.  The argument from necessary truths to a necessary mind is valid, but it persuades only someone who already holds that truths must be thought.  Gödel's theorems say nothing about God, and most logicians reject the Lucas-Penrose argument that they show minds are not machines.

Findings across the five articles

The table lists each feature of physics the five articles examine, the theistic argument from it at its strongest, the naturalist reply at its strongest, the article's verdict, and how strong the article judges the theistic argument.  "Decisive" means the article settles the question.  "Modest" means real evidence that cannot be given a number.  "Neither" means the feature favours neither side.

Two results in the table are decisive, and both correct an overclaim rather than prove a conclusion.  Five are modest, and all five belong to one family:  the world is orderly, intelligible, and began in a special state.  The rest favour neither side.

Where the verdicts bear on each other

Laws and mathematics are two forms of one argument from order.  The laws article asks why nature is uniform.  The mathematics article asks why that uniformity is simple enough for human minds to capture with mathematics they chose for beauty.  Both meet the same naturalist reply, that the order is a brute fact, and both name Max Tegmark's mathematical universe as the one attempt to explain it away.  Both fail to reach a number for the same reason:  nobody has a measure over possible worlds.  So they should not be counted as two independent pieces of evidence.  The mathematics version adds one thing the laws version lacks, the fit between the world and the knower, and that is the part that points to one mind behind both.

The low-entropy beginning and the beginning of time agree, and share a limit.  The entropy article finds that the universe began in an extremely special state, and the time article finds that time probably began.  The two lines are partly independent, one thermodynamic and one about the geometry of an expanding universe.  Both are stated inside the big bang model, and neither by itself reaches an absolute beginning:  the entropy article says the low-entropy past shows only that the present ordered era began a finite time ago.  Read together they make a finite past more probable than either does alone.  Neither says anything about the age of the earth.

The preferred frame is raised by the time article and answered by the quantum article.  A God in time needs a real present, and relativity supplies one only if a preferred frame is added.  The time article left open whether quantum entanglement requires such a frame.  The quantum article answers that it does not.  Bohm's theory needs a preferred slicing of spacetime, and its defenders grant that this "would seem to imply a clear violation of Lorentz invariance."⁷  But Roderich Tumulka built a collapse model that "does not make use of a preferred slicing of space-time,"⁸ and many worlds needs none either.  So the presentist gains no support from entanglement, and the preferred frame stays a metaphysical choice.  One consequence follows from the two articles together, and it is this page's inference, not either article's:  the one interpretation that needs a preferred frame, Bohm's, is deterministic, so it also closes the open quantum outcomes that Russell, Murphy and Tracy need for God's action.  A theist who wants physics to supply both a real present and quantum room for providence cannot get both from the same interpretation among those the quantum article examined.

Information is cheap in physics and costly only in biology.  The laws article shows from Rolf Landauer's work that information in Shannon's sense is physical and has a measurable energy cost.  The entropy article prices all the DNA on earth, counted as information, at 2.4 seconds of the earth's entropy export.  Both articles end at the same place:  the question that survives is not how much information exists but how functional codes first arose, and both hand it to the biology articles.

Freedom gets no help from physics in either direction.  The quantum article finds that chance is not freedom, and the time article finds that foreknowledge has an answer on either model of God, while the block universe rules out open theism.  The case for or against free will has to be made outside physics, in Mind, Reason, and Consciousness.

Objections and responses

"Five modest arguments add up to a strong one."  Not by simple addition.  The laws and mathematics arguments overlap, as shown above, and so do the low-entropy beginning and the beginning of time, which are both read inside the big bang model.  Without a number for any of them, nobody can multiply them.  What the five do show together is that the same kind of fact turns up wherever physics looks at its own foundations:  order, intelligibility and a special start.  That is a pattern theism predicts.  It is still not a proof.

"Every one of these is a God-of-the-gaps argument."  The arguments the section rejects are the gap arguments:  God hiding in quantum chance, the second law as a barrier only God can cross, consciousness as the collapse mechanism.  The ones that survive argue from what physics finds, not from what it fails to find.  Swinburne's point holds for laws and mathematics:  science explains laws by deeper laws and cannot explain why there are laws at all.²  The low-entropy beginning is the exception, and it should be stated as one.  It is partly an argument from present ignorance, because physics has no dynamical explanation of it yet.  If physics one day derives it, that argument shrinks back into the general argument from order.

"Naturalism explains all of this with a multiverse and an observer filter."  The laws article answers that observers need order where they live, not the same atomic physics in gas clouds across the visible universe, which is what spectroscopy finds.  The entropy article reports that Carroll himself treats the multiverse answer to the low-entropy beginning as a challenge still to be met, not a solution.  The multiverse as such is weighed in Fine-Tuning.

"If no argument can be priced, the honest verdict is that physics says nothing about God."  That would follow only if evidence had to come with a number.  A skeptic who finds an orderly, intelligible, specially started world no more expected on theism than on naturalism is free to weigh it that way, and the laws article says so.  This page judges that most readers, on reflection, will find these features more expected if a rational mind made the world.  The judgment is an intuition, and it is labelled as one.

"Theism could explain any world, so it predicts nothing."  The Bible promises regular seasons "while the earth remains,"⁹ so a world without stable law would count against the biblical God, as the laws article argues.  The time article also finds a real constraint:  the block universe rules out open theism.  Physics can count against particular forms of theism even where it cannot count against God.

"Retiring the second-law argument and Gitt's laws gives away too much."  A skeptic who checks either one finds it fails, and an argument that fails on checking costs the arguments that do not.  The entropy and laws articles each keep the true core:  energy needs a directing mechanism, and the origin of the genetic code is unexplained.  Both questions are real, and both belong to biology.

"For a young-earth reader, none of this helps."  Correct, and it should not be read as if it did.  None of the five articles bears on the age of the earth.  Penrose's number is computed inside the big bang model, and a young-earth cosmology needs its own account of why the universe is so far from equilibrium.  Both theories of time allow a young universe.  The section's value to a young-earth reader is that it shows which physics arguments for creation hold, and which to stop using.

Issues and unanswered questions

1. Nothing in the section can be priced. The laws, entropy and mathematics articles each say so for their own argument: there is no measure over possible law-sets, over possible initial states, or over possible fits between mathematics and the world. The same limit governs Fine-Tuning. Every "modest" verdict on this page rests on shared intuition, not calculation.
2. The preferred-frame answer is limited. Tumulka's relativistic collapse model covers particles that do not interact, and the quantum article did not check whether a fully interacting collapse theory without a preferred frame exists. If none can be built, Bohm's preferred slicing becomes harder to avoid, and the inference above about Bohm and quantum providence matters more. That inference is this page's own; neither child states it.
3. Each child has unread primaries on its weakest side. The entropy article did not obtain John Earman's critique of the Past Hypothesis, the main philosophical challenge to taking the low-entropy beginning as a brute assumption. The quantum article did not read Hartle and Hawking's 1983 paper or Vilenkin's 1982 paper. The mathematics article did not read Derek Abbott's, Mark Colyvan's or Sorin Bangu's naturalist replies, and reads several theistic defenders only through Craig, who is a party to the debate. The laws article did not read Foster's earlier papers or David Lewis's 1994 paper.
4. One topic falls between the articles. The black-hole information paradox is named by the laws article as belonging to this section, and none of the five covers it.
5. No contradiction between the children was found. Their verdicts on overlapping questions agree: Tegmark's mathematical universe, the low-entropy beginning against the beginning of time, the preferred frame, and the physical cost of information. The two articles that cite Carroll's 2018 chapter and Hume's Enquiry use different passages for different points, and their readings are consistent.

Verdict

The foundations of physics do not prove God, and they do not leave theism and naturalism level.  Wherever the five articles look, at law, at mathematics, at the first state of the universe and at the beginning of time, they find the same kind of fact:  a world that is orderly, intelligible to human minds, and specially started.  Theism expects that world.  Naturalism can accept it only as given.  The advantage is real and modest, and no one can put a number on it.

The section's firmest results are corrections.  The second law does not forbid evolution, and apologists should stop saying it does.  Quantum cosmology's "nothing" contains laws, and naturalists should stop calling it nothing.  Gitt's laws of information, consciousness-causes-collapse, the quantum gap for God's action and arguments from Gödel's theorems should all be retired.

On the largest open questions, whether only the present is real, which interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, and what numbers are, physics is silent, and Christian theism has a coherent position on more than one side of each.  None of it bears on the age of the earth.

Sources