The Multiverse

1 Introduction

During a discussion on myths that pre-date Jesus, an apologist introduces the concept of the multiverse. It’s not clear but I think he is claiming that the concept of multiple universes is an invention by atheists as a way to explain fine-tuning, without requiring the God hypothesis. This is wrong for at least four reasons:

• The multiverse is not a new idea
• The multiverse concept is inherent in many religions
• Multiple universes are found to be inherent in the theoretical physics of our universe in multiple theories
• The multiverse does not counter God-based creation (He could have created the multiverse).

1.1  Etymology

The concept of multiple universes is not new, but the word “multiverse” is fairly new, having been coined by American psychologist William James in 1895:

“But those times are past; and we of the nineteenth century, with our evolutionary theories and our mechanical philosophies, already know nature too impartially and too well to worship unreservedly any god of whose character she can be an adequate expression. Truly all we know of good and beauty proceeds from nature, but none the less so all we know of evil. Visible nature is all plasticity and indifference, a moral multiverse, as one might call it, and not a moral universe.”

2 The Multiverse in Ancient History

2.1 The Ancient Greeks

Atomism  originated in Ancient Greece about 2500 years ago. Several atomists at that time proposed multiple universes. For example, Democritus:
“In some worlds there is no Sun and Moon, in others they are larger than in our world, and in others more numerous. In some parts there are more worlds, in others fewer; in some parts they are arising, in others failing. There are some worlds devoid of living creatures or plants or any moisture.

2.2 Hinduism

The Hindu Puranas contain several references:

Every universe is covered by seven layers--earth, water, fire, air, sky, the total energy and false ego—each ten times greater than the previous one. There are innumerable universes besides this one, and although they are unlimitedly large, they move about like atoms in You. Therefore You are called unlimited [ananta].

Lord Siva said: My dear son, I, Lord Brahma and the other demigods, who rotate within this universe under the misconception of our greatness, cannot exhibit any power to compete with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, for innumerable universes and their inhabitants come into existence and are annihilated by the simple direction of the Lord

After separating the different universes, the gigantic universal form of the Lord [Maha-Visnu], which came out of the causal ocean, the place of appearance for the first purusa-avatara, entered into each of the separate universes, desiring to lie on the created transcendental water [Garbhodaka].

2.3 Buddhism

"Disciples," the Buddha said "nowhere between the lowest of hells below and the highest heaven above, nowhere in all the infinite worlds that stretch right and left, is there the equal, much less the superior, of a Buddha. Incalculable is the excellence which springs from obeying the Precepts and from other virtuous conduct."

Jataka Tales of the Buddha Part I

2.4 Islam

Imam Fakhr al-Din al-Razi was one of the outstanding figures in Islamic theology. Hedescribes the main arguments against the existence of multiple worlds or universes, pointing out their weaknesses and refuting them. This rejection arose from his affirmation of atomism, as advocated by the Ash'ari school of Islamic theology, which entails the existence of vacant space in which the atoms move, combine and separate. He argued that there exists an infinite outer space beyond the known world, and that God has the power to fill the vacuum with an infinite number of universes.

2.5 Christianity

There are many Christians who recognise that the concept of a multiverse does not conflict with belief in God and examples are provided in section 4. It is worth noting here that in common with most religions, the Bible refers to other universes, for example:

You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you
- Romans 8:9

From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.
- Jonah 2.2

For in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning
- Ecclesiastes 9:10

Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm."
- John18:36

Here is one Christian's views of spiritual realms...

The spiritual realm is as real as the natural realm. In fact the spiritual realm determines what takes places in the natural realm. God has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. When Jesus died and rose again He appeared to his disciples and then ascended up into heaven (Acts1:9-11).  Although the location of heaven is up high above the earth, its operation is all over the earth and in our hearts. The spiritual realm is a real world, invisible to the natural eye but visible to the eye of faith.

3 The Multiverse in Modern Times

3.1 Modal Realism

The philosopher David Lewis developed the philosophy of Modal Realismin the 1960s and this is perhaps the most extreme multiverse idea. To summarise: All possible worlds are as real as the world we experience.

In physics, the multiverse appears in the solutions to the three main aspects of the physics of our universe: Quantum Mechanics (which describes the behaviour of particles), cosmology (which describes the nature of space-time) and string theory (which describes the nature of particles).

3.2 Quantum Mechanics

The many-worlds hypothesis came from Hugh Everett in 1957, as an interpretation of quantum mechanics alongside the Copenhagen interpretation and pilot-wave theory.  With each quantum event (occurring everywhere, every second), the world splits into many worlds, one for each possible outcome. Each of these worlds is at that time identical, except for the one different outcome. Thereafter, they develop independently, continually splitting as more quantum events occur.

 

For example, there are numerous copies of myself, in other worlds, that have split off from me since my conception. Since no communication is possible between the various worlds, each copy of myself believes he is the real me.

3.3 Inflation

The Big Bang model shows that when the universe grew exponentially in the first tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, some parts of space-time expanded more quickly than others. This could have created "bubbles" of space-time that then developed into other universes. Our universe has its laws of physics, while other universes could have different laws.

Alan Guth of MIT explains: "It's hard to build models of inflation that don't lead to a multiverse, but it's not impossible, so I think there's still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking [the idea of a] multiverse seriously."

Other researchers agreed on the link between inflation and the multiverse. "In most of the models of inflation, if inflation is there, then the multiverse is there," Stanford University theoretical physicist Andrei Linde, who wasn't involved in the new study, said at the same news conference. "It's possible to invent models of inflation that do not allow [a] multiverse, but it's difficult. Every experiment that brings better credence to inflationary theory brings us much closer to hints that the multiverse is real."

When Guth and his colleagues thought up cosmic inflation more than 30 years ago, scientists thought it was untestable. Today, however, researchers are able to study light left over from the Big Bang called cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB).

3.4 String Theory

The mathematical basis of string theory requires the existence of ten dimensions (nine of space and one of time). We only perceive three space dimensions and one time dimension, so the other six space dimensions are hidden from us .

The mathematical outcome of this is that there are 10⁵⁰⁰ different ways that a 4D universe like ours can exist within a 10 dimensional framework. This implies at least 10⁵⁰⁰ possible universes with slightly different physics in each one. This collection of possible universes is often referred to as the “string landscape.”

There are three important outcomes of String Theory with regard to the multiverse:

• There are plenty of logically possible and mathematically consistent universes besides our own
• The string landscape is exactly the sort of thing we would expect to find if a multiverse existed.
• Proposed mechanisms for turning the possible universes of the landscape into actual, physical entities exist, for example, eternal inflation which predicts regions of space expanding indefinitely to produce “bubble universes” that would produce a member of the string landscape

3.5 Consequences of Multiverse versus Single Universe

Theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg makes the point that if the hypotheses described above are true (especially in 3.4) then there may be no stand-alone, self-contained explanation for the nature of our universe, as he explains...

"Inflation is naturally chaotic. Bubbles form in the expanding universe, each developing into a big or small bang, perhaps each with different values for what we usually call the constants of nature. The inhabitants (if any) of one bubble cannot observe other bubbles, so to them their bubble appears as the whole universe. The whole assembly of all these universes has come to be called the “multiverse.”

These bubbles may realize all the different solutions of the equations of string theory. If this is true, then the hope of finding a rational explanation for the precise values of quark masses and other constants of the standard model that we observe in our big bang is doomed, for their values would be an accident of the particular part of the multiverse in which we live. We would have to content ourselves with a crude anthropic explanation for some aspects of the universe we see: any beings like ourselves that are capable of studying the universe must be in a part of the universe in which the constants of nature allow the evolution of life and intelligence. Man may indeed be the measure of all things, though not quite in the sense intended by Protagoras.

So far, this anthropic speculation seems to provide the only explanation of the observed value of the dark energy. In the standard model and all other known quantum field theories, the dark energy is just a constant of nature. It could have any value. If we didn’t know any better we might expect the density of dark energy to be similar to the energy densities typical of elementary particle physics, such as the energy density in an atomic nucleus. But then the universe would have expanded so rapidly that no galaxies or stars or planets could have formed. For life to evolve, the dark energy could not be much larger than the value we observe, and there is no reason for it to be any smaller.

Such crude anthropic explanations are not what we have hoped for in physics, but they may have to content us. Physical science has historically progressed not only by finding precise explanations of natural phenomena, but also by discovering what sorts of things can be precisely explained. These may be fewer than we had thought."

And...

"String theory, which predicts a multiverse, can’t be verified by detecting the other parts of the multiverse. But it might make other predictions that can be verified. For example, it may say that in all of the big bangs within the multiverse, certain things will always be true, and those things may be verifiable. It may say that certain symmetries will always be observed, or that they’ll always be broken according to a certain pattern that we can observe. If it made enough predictions like that, then we would say that string theory is correct. And if the theory predicted a multiverse, then we’d say that that’s correct too. You don’t have to verify every prediction to know that a theory is correct."

3.6 Evidence

The evidence for multiple/ universes depends on the hypothesis. But perhaps more significantly is the fact that multiple universes keep appearing unbidden as solutions to the equations in multiple areas of study (see above). It is important to keep in mind that the multiverse view is not actually a theory, it is rather a consequence of our current understanding of theoretical physics. This distinction is crucial. We have not waved our hands and said: “Let there be a multiverse”. Instead the idea that the universe is perhaps one of infinitely many is derived from current theories like quantum mechanics and string theory as described above.

But is there a way to test for multiple universes, in other words, are they falsifiable?  Well, the universes predicted by string theory and inflation live in the same physical space (unlike the many universes of quantum mechanics which live in a mathematical space), so they can overlap or collide. Indeed, they inevitably must collide, leaving possible signatures in the cosmic sky which we can try to search for.

The exact details of the signatures depends intimately on the models – ranging from cold or hot spots in the cosmic microwave background to anomalous voids in the distribution of galaxies. Nevertheless, since collisions with other universes must occur in a particular direction, a general expectation is that any signatures will break the uniformity of our observable universe.

These signatures can be tested by looking for imprints in the cosmic microwave background. There is also the evidence from gravitational waves which could be affected by the multiple dimensions predicted in string theory. There is even the possibility of building a particle accelerator with enough energy to create universes. The issue there is how would we detect them if we created them!

4 Modern Christian Approaches to the Multiverse.

Apologist objections to the multiverse ignore the possibility that the multiverse is part of God’s plan. There are Christians who earn a living as theoretical physicists and are able to reconcile the bizarre and counter-intuitive models of reality arising from quantum mechanics and string theory with their faith. Examples…

4.1 Evangelical cosmologist Don Page

Page offers a theological argument for the existence of the Many Worlds Interpretation:

“Science looks for the simplest hypotheses to explain observations. Starting with the simple assumption that {\em the actual world is the best possible world}, I sketch an {\it Optimal Argument for the Existence of God}, that the sufferings in our universe would not be consistent with its being alone the best possible world, but the total world could be the best possible if it includes an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God who experiences great value in creating and knowing a universe with great mathematical elegance, even though such a universe has suffering.

God seems loathe to violate elegant laws of physics that He has chosen to use in His creation, such as Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism or Einstein's equations of general relativity for gravity within their classical domains of applicability, even if their violation could greatly reduce human suffering (e.g., from falls). If indeed God is similarly loathe to violate quantum unitarity (though such violations by judicious collapses of the wavefunction could greatly reduce human suffering by always choosing only favorable outcomes), the resulting unitary evolution would lead to an Everett multiverse of `many worlds', meaning many different quasiclassical histories beyond the quasiclassical history that each of us can observe over his or her lifetime. This is a theological argument for one reason why God might prefer to create a multiverse much broader than what one normally thinks of for a history of the universe.”

4.2 Physicist Tom Rudelius

Rudelius is a Ph.D candidate in Physics at Harvard and puts it like this…

“Beyond this, it should be noted that a multiverse is not in any way incompatible with Christian theism.¹⁶ Nowhere does the Bible suggest that God has created only one universe or one set of beings in his image. A successful multiverse scenario, at most, could help refute the teleological argument for God’s existence. But as atheistic philosopher Kai Nielsen pointed out, “To show that an argument is invalid or unsound is not to show that the conclusion of the argument is false…. All the proofs of God’s existence may fail, but it still may be the case that God exists.” God could perfectly well have created an infinite number of universes, even an infinite number of universes with intelligent life. After all, if you were God, would you really create just one?”

4.3 Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku 

Kaku explains how the science of the multiverse fits in to his religious upbringing…

“When speaking about the multiverse, I’m often asked questions about the different kinds of universes that can form as a result of extra dimensions, string theory or even chaotic inflation for example. These are in some sense different kinds of universes but for me personally, it’s very aesthetically pleasing. This all goes back to my childhood with my parents being Buddhist. In Buddhism, you believe in nirvana and timelessness with no beginning and no end. As a child I went to Sunday school where I learned about arks, great floods and the instant of creation when God said, “Let there be Light”.

So, all my life I’ve had these two competing paradigms in my head. With the multiverse idea, we have the beautiful melding of these two ideas. The reason being is that we do have this nirvana, this timelessness, this eleven dimensional hyperspace, this arena of string theory. But we also have bubbles that form all the time, almost like a bubble bath. Sometimes the bubbles expand rapidly giving us universes, combine with other bubbles and sometimes even pop. This continual creation, the idea of a multiverse is very pleasing to me because I can now meld Buddhist nirvana with Judeo-Christian epistemology.”

4.4 Mary-Jane Rubenstein

Rubenstein is Professor of Religion at Wesleyan University:

“If our world is the only world, then it's very difficult to explain: how is it that things are so perfect? How is it that sunsets are so beautiful? And the Atomists believed that it was not the case that some anthropomorphic god or gods made the universe so it was perfect, but that our world was one of an infinite number of other worlds. Worlds were the product of accident, of particles colliding with one another, and an infinite amount of space to play in.

Every major development in modern Western science since Copernicus has been advertised as this radical decentralization of our importance. Copernicus takes us out of the center of the solar system, and then Darwin takes us out of the garden of Eden, Freud takes us out of control of our own psyches — as science progresses, we learn that we are less and less important than we thought we were. But, of course, we still tend to think that we run the planet.

You do run into some fascinating theological problems. For example, if you are operating in a Christian framework, are there inhabitants of those other universes, and are they fallen? If they have fallen, do they also need Christ to go there and redeem them? Is Jesus just constantly traveling from universe to universe to get incarnated, teach for 30 years, and then die?”

4.5 William Lane Craig

The noted Apologist Craig says this in an interview:

Robert Lawrence Kuhn: Bill, does the idea of a multiverse—many different kinds of universes, enumerable universes—does that bother your theism?

Dr. Craig: No, it doesn’t bother my theism at all. I think that God as the infinite creator of all space and time could create separate space-time manifolds or create a universe so vast that there would be different causally unconnected domains within one universe. So, once you have an infinite transcendent creator, there’s simply no problem with the scope of the space-time world that he brings into being.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn: How about in quantum mechanics? As you know, there is something called branching or differentiation, where at every Planck time, as they say, there’s a branching of or differentiation of the worlds. There’s infinite numbers of us talking in different ways with very slight differences. And then you have a multiplicity of these quantum mechanical worlds.

Dr. Craig: That’s one way in which theorists have thought to generate a world ensemble of universes, though I think that most quantum physicists would regard this as an extraordinarily implausible interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn: My question for you is: Does that bother your theism, however you generate—

Dr. Craig: Oh no, no, it wouldn’t bother my theism at all because God would still be the one who established the laws of quantum mechanics, who created the quantum vacuum and the space and time, the arena in which all these reactions take place. So, as I say, once you have a transcendent source of all space and time, matter and energy, then he’s free to create any sort of physical reality he wants.

4.6 John Lennox

John Lennox is a mathematician and Christian Apologist. In this extract from his book "God's Undertaker: has science buried God?" he makes the point that God and a multiverse are not mutually exclusive and that the intelligent design argument can be applied to the multiverse just as it can to a single universe. He also makes a case that the existence of a multiverse provides a logical proof for the existence of God...

"It should be pointed out that although some suggest fine-tuning means either that there is a God or a multiverse, logically these two options are not mutually exclusive, although they are usually presented as such. After all, parallel universes could be the work of a Creator.  

Christian de Duve writes: ‘Even if the multiverse theory turns out to be correct, the deduction drawn from it by Rees and Weinberg strikes me as what is called in French ‘drowning the fish.’ Whether you use all the water in the oceans to drown the animal, it will still be there affirming its presence. However many universes one postulates, ours can never be rendered insignificant by the magnitude of this number... what appears to me as supremely significant is that a combination capable of giving rise to life and mind should exist at all.’ Therefore the multiverse argument does not in fact weaken the design arguments.

Another version of the multiverse theory, the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, is that every logically possible universe exists. However, if every possible universe exists, then, according to philosopher Alvin Plantinga of Notre Dame University, there must be a universe in which God exists – since his existence is logically possible – even though highly improbable in the view of the New Atheists. It then follows that, since God is omnipotent, he must exist in every universe and hence there is only one universe, this universe, of which he is the Creator and Upholder."

4.7 Bernard Haisch

Bernard Haisch is a German-born American astrophysicist. In his book "The God Theory: Universes, Zero-point Fields, and What's Behind It All"  he makes the case for an underlying  intelligence, which we can refer to as God, to be the origin of the multiverse...

This implicitly assumes that some kinds of laws or fields preexist to allow quantum fluctuations to arise. No laws, no action. And of course this also implies that these universes, ours included, have no purpose because they arise out of random processes. I am simply proposing that rather than purposeless laws or fields preexisting, it is a supreme intelligence that preexists, and that the ideas of this intelligence give rise to laws of physics that create universes, so call this underlying intelligence God. Both origin explanations are equally logical and equally beyond proof at this time, but there is a purpose behind the God interpretation.

5 The Occam's Razor Objection

Some argue against the existence of the multiverse on a theological or scientific basis, but by appealing to Occam's Razor. Some argue that it is absurd to hypothesise a vast number of universes (perhaps an infinite number) just to explain our own, therefore it is simplest to assume that only one universe exists, which theists will say was created by God and which non-theists will say occurred naturally.

Occam’s razor does not say the simplest idea is usually the right one - it says that the simplest explanation is usually the right one. The introduction of a god is a more complex explanation because the multiverse is explained using existing laws of nature, whereas the god hypothesis requires the introduction of an additional entity which may not exist and which many argue is beyond human comprehension.

Jesus the Apocalyptic Preacher

An excellent introduction to the concept of apocalypticism by Bart Ehrman

In this thread I am trying to argue that Jesus understood himself to be the messiah.  So far I have made one of my two main arguments, with the understanding that *both* arguments have to be considered in order to have a compelling case.  So the first prong doesn’t prove much on its own.  But in combination with the second argument, it makes a strong case.  The first argument is that Jesus’ followers would not have understood him as the messiah after his death (as they did) unless they believed him to be the messiah before his death – even if they came to believe he had been raised from the dead, that would not have made them think he was the messiah.   I’ve explained why in my previous post.

The second involves showing that it was not only the disciples who understood Jesus to be the messiah before his death, but that Jesus himself did.  This is even harder to show, but I think there is really compelling evidence.  There are two major points I’m going to make, from two different sets of data.  But before explaining either one, I have to lay out the overarching context for Jesus’ teaching and ministry, the world view known as Jewish apocalypticism.

Jewish apocalypticism was a very common view in Jesus’ day – it was the view of the Essenes who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, of the Pharisees, of John the Baptist, later of the Apostle Paul – and almost certainly of Jesus.  I can demonstrate that in some later thread if it seems appropriate.  For now, let me just say that this is a widely held view among critical scholars – by far the majority view for over a century, since the writings of Albert Schweitzer.

What did early Jewish apocalypticists believe?  Let me break it down into four component themes.  I have drawn this discussion from my textbook on the New Testament.

Dualism

Jewish apocalypticists were dualists.  That is to say, they maintained that there were two fundamental components to all of reality: the forces of good and the forces of evil.  The forces of good were headed by God himself, the forces of evil by his superhuman enemy, sometimes called Satan, or Beelzebub, or the Devil.  On the side of God were the good angels; on the side of the Devil were the demons.  On the side of God were righteousness and life; on the side of the Devil were sin and death.  These were actual forces, cosmic powers to which human beings could be subject and with which they had to be aligned.  No one was in neutral territory.  People stood either with God or with Satan, they were in the light or in darkness, they were in the truth or in error.

This apocalyptic dualism had clear historical implications.  All of history could be divided into two ages, the present age and the age to come.  The present age was the age of sin and evil, when the powers of darkness were in the ascendancy, when those who sided with God were made to suffer by those in control of this world, when sin, disease, famine, violence, and death were running rampant.  For some unknown reason, God had relinquished control of this age to the powers of evil.  And things were getting worse.

At the end of this age, however, God would reassert himself, intervening in history and destroying the forces of evil.  There would come a cataclysmic break in which all that was opposed to God would be annihilated, and God would bring in a new age.  In this new age, there would be no more suffering or pain; there would be no more hatred, or despair, or war, or disease, or death.  God would be the ruler of all, in a kingdom that would never end.

Pessimism

Even though, in the long run, everything would work out for those who sided with God, in the short term things did not look good.  Jewish apocalypticists maintained that those who sided with God were going to suffer in this age, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.  The forces of evil were going to grow in power as they attempted to wrest sovereignty over this world away from God.  There was no thought here of being able to improve the human condition through mass education or advanced technologies.  The righteous could not make their lives better, because the forces of evil were in control, and those who sided with God were opposed by those who were much stronger than they.  Things would get worse and worse until the very end, when quite literally, all hell was to break loose.

Vindication

But at the end, when the suffering of God’s people was at its height, God would finally intervene on their behalf and vindicate his name.  For in this perspective God was not only the creator of this world, he was also its redeemer.  And his vindication would be universal: it would affect the entire world, not simply the Jewish nation.  Jewish apocalypticists maintained that the entire creation had become corrupt because of the presence of sin and the power of Satan.  This universal corruption required a universal redemption; God would destroy all that is evil and create a new heaven and a new earth, one in which the forces of evil would have no place whatsoever.

Different apocalypticists had different views concerning how God would bring about this new creation, even though they all claimed to have received the details by a revelation from God.  In some apocalyptic scenarios, God was to send a human messiah to lead the troops of the children of light into battle against the forces of evil.  In others, God was to send a kind of cosmic judge of the earth, sometimes also called the messiah or the “Son of Man” to bring about a cataclysmic overthrow of the demonic powers that oppressed the children of light.

This final vindication would involve a day of judgment for all people. Those who had aligned themselves with the powers of evil would face the Almighty Judge, and render an account of what they had done; those who had remained faithful to the true God would be rewarded and brought into his eternal kingdom.  Moreover, this judgment applied not only to people who happened to be living at the time of the end.  No one should think, that is, that he or she could side with the powers of evil, oppress the people of God, die prosperous and contented, and so get away with it.  God would allow no one to escape.  He was going to raise all people bodily from the dead, and they would have to face judgment, eternal bliss for those who had taken his side, eternal torment for everyone else.  And there was not a sweet thing that anyone could do to stop him.

Imminence

According to Jewish apocalypticists, this vindicaton of God was going to happen very soon.  Standing in the tradition of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, apocalypticists maintained that God had revealed to them the course of history, and that the end was almost here.  Those who were evil had to repent, before it was too late.  Those who were good, who were suffering as a result, were to hold on.  For it would not be long before God would intervene, sending a savior — possibly on the clouds of heaven in judgment on the earth — bringing with him the good kingdom for those who remained faithful to his Law.  Indeed, the end was right around the corner.  In the words of one first-century Jewish apocalypticist:  “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that that kingdom of God has come with power.”  These in fact are the words of Jesus (Mark 9:1).  Or as he says elsewhere, “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away before all these things have taken place” (Mark 13:30).

Our earliest traditions about Jesus portray him as a Jewish apocalypticist who responded to the political and social crises of his day, including the domination of his nation by a foreign power, by proclaiming that his generation was living at the end of the age, that God would soon intervene on behalf of his people, sending a cosmic judge of the earth, the Son of Man who would destroy the forces of evil and set up God’s kingdom.  In preparation for his coming, the people of Israel needed to repent and turn to God, trusting him as a kindly parent and loving one another as his special children.  Those who refused to accept this message would be liable to the judgment of God, soon to arrive with the coming of the Son of Man.

Scholars today talk not only about the three Synoptic Gospels, but also their sources (as they did, in fact, in Schweitzer’s day as well).  It is striking that apocalyptic teachings are found on Jesus lips in all layers of our tradition:  they are found in our earliest Gospel Mark.  Read chapter 13!  And Mark’s summary of Jesus’ teaching in 1:15 is thoroughly apocalyptic: the end of this current age is at hand, the Kingdom of God is soon to arrive, people need to repent in preparation for it.

Such sayings are also found in the source common to Matthew and Luke commonly called Q.  They can be found in the material unique to Matthew, from the source(s) scholars call M.  They are present as well in the material unique to Luke, from the source(s) scholars call L.  In other words, they are at every layer of our Synoptic traditions.  (I give lots of examples in my fuller treatment of this matter in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium.)

When you arrange the Gospels chronologically, it is striking that the apocalyptic preaching so prominent in Mark and Q later begins to fade (Luke’s Gospel), then to disappear (John’s Gospel), and then to be opposed (the Gospel of Thomas).  Why is that?  Because the expected end of the age never arrived, the Kingdom never came.  And so Jesus’ teaching was modified over the course of time, to accommodate the new situation the Christian story-tellers found themselves in.

The earliest traditions are unified, however: Jesus proclaimed an apocalyptic message.  In my next post I’ll give one other compelling reason for thinking that Jesus must have been principally an apocalypticist, before laying out – possible in just one post! – what I think the core of Jesus’ teaching must have been.  I will then be in a position to argue that he saw himself as the messiah.

Over the years scholars have adduced lots of reasons for thinking that Jesus – like many others in his day – was a Jewish apocalypticist, one who thought that the world was controlled by forces of evil but that God was very soon going to intervene to overthrow everything and everyone opposed to him in order to set up a good kingdom here on earth.  As I pointed out in my previous post, this is the view found in Jesus’ teachings in Mark (e.g., ch. 13), in Q (the source used by Matthew and Luke for many of their sayings), in M (Matthew’s special source[s]), and in L (Luke’s special source[s]).

There is another very good argument for thinking that Jesus must have subscribed to some kind of apocalyptic view (I’ll lay out what his exact views apparently were in a future post).  In fact, this argument is so good that I wish I had thought of it myself!  But alas, credit goes to others.  The argument, as I usually phrase it, is that “the beginning and the end are the keys to the middle.”

We know with relative certainty how Jesus began his public ministry: it was by associating with and being baptized by John the Baptist, an apocalyptic preacher of doom.   And we know with relative certainty what happened in the wake of Jesus’ life and death: the establishment of apocalyptically minded communities of those claiming to follow him.   The beginning was apocalyptic; the aftermath was apocalyptic.  What came in between must almost certainly have been apocalyptic. I’ll flush out the argument later.

For now, let me begin to explicate.   First, the baptism.   There are some aspects of Jesus’ life that are about as certain as ancient history can be certain.  It is virtually certain, for example, that he was a Jewish preacher from Galilee; that in his last week he made a trip to Jerusalem; that he was there arrested and crucified on order of the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate.   All that is virtually beyond dispute, except among people who on principle dispute everything because they prefer conspiracy theory to historical argument.   But historically all that is pretty certain.

Other things in Jesus’ life are also pretty certain, even if not quite *as* certain as, say, the fact he got crucified.  Among those other really certain things about him is the fact that before he began his own preaching ministry he associated with John the Baptist and was baptized by him.   This is all highly significant.

Before exploring its significance, I need to explain why it is so certain.   When trying to establish what happened in Jesus’ life, historians do what they do with *every* figure from the past.  They look for what our sources of information say.  We don’t simply trust our sources because they say something, even if they say something that we want to think.  We critically examine our sources with highly skeptical eyes, in order to differentiate between fact and fiction.

Historians who want to determine what happened to a person in the past look for multiple sources of information (not just one – since one source may have made something up) that are all independent of one another (so that they aren’t simply getting their claims from one another) that basically corroborate each other’s accounts and that are not simply giving information that accords with their own personal biases.

And that’s precisely what we get when it comes to reports of Jesus’ association with John the Baptist.   Take all our Gospel sources: Mark, Q, M, L, and John.   And what do you find?   Jesus’ connection with John is attested, independently, all over the place (at the *least* in Mark, Q, and John).

Moreover, the story of Jesus being baptized by John is not the sort of thing that later Christians would have been likely to make up, for a pretty obvious reason.   The early Christians believed that a person who baptized another was their spiritual superior.  What Christian would make up the idea that John the Baptist was Jesus’ spiritual superior?  Moreover, John was baptizing people for the “remission of sins.”  Who would invent the idea that Jesus needed to have a remission for his sins?  We’re talkin’ the Son of God here….

And so the story of Jesus being baptized by John is almost certainly told in all our Gospels because it is a historical fact (even if the details in this or that story are later embelleshments).

And why is that significant for understanding Jesus as an apocalypticist?  Because of what John stood for.   We get the clearest expression of John’s views in our earliest account of his preaching, in Q.  Here John is shown to be a proclaimer of imminent apocalyptic destruction.  As he says, in urging people to repent:   “The axe is already laid at the root of the tree; every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire” (see Luke 3:9).

This is an apocalyptic image of coming destruction.  People who do not live worthily of God by “bearing good fruit” will be cut down and destroyed by fire.  And when will that happen?  The axe is already laid to the root of the tree – in other words, the chopping is now ready to begin.  Judgment is here and will soon take place.

This is the message Jesus associated with.  It is important to recognize that Jesus had all sorts of religious options in his day.  He could have joined the Pharisees.  He could have committed to the views of the Sadducees.  He could have joined a political revolutionary movement.  He could have simply minded his own business and gotten on with life.  But what he did instead was go to John the Baptist, a preacher of imminent apocalyptic doom, and join his movement.

There can be little doubt that Jesus began his ministry on an apocalyptic note.   In the aftermath of Jesus’ life apocalyptic communities of his followers emerged.  Jesus was the historical connection between that beginning and that end.  His life and ministry must have been apocalyptic as well, as I will be arguing further.

Why hasn't the graviton been detected yet?

An excellent overview by Barak Shoshany, Graduate Student at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

A graviton is really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really hard to detect.

Detecting a photon, for example, is extremely easy. There many types of devices that are able to detect single photons, such as photomultipliers, used in labs around the world. In fact, you don't even need any fancy technology; the human eye can, in principle, detect a single photon. (See The Human Eye and Single Photons.)

However, detecting gravitons is much (much much etc...) harder. A famous example (see [gr-qc/0601043] Can Gravitons Be Detected?) considers an ideal detector with the mass of the planet Jupiter, around 1027${10}^{27}$ kilograms, placed in close orbit around a neutron star, which is a very strong source of gravitons. A back-of-the-envelope calculation reveals that even in this extremely unrealistic scenario, it would take 100 years to detect a single graviton!

Okay, you say, so let's just make that detector (sometime in the far future when we have the technology to do so) and wait for 100 years. There's a crucial detail that I forgot to mention, however. The star also emits neutrinos in addition to gravitons; in fact, many more neutrinos than gravitons. And neutrinos are much easier to detect than gravitons. In fact, we can calculate that for every graviton that is detected in this scenario, around 1033${10}^{33}$ neutrinos will be detected. So we will never be able to find the one graviton among the 1033${10}^{33}$ neutrinos.

Ah, you say, but we can build a neutrino shield and block the neutrinos! But such a shield would need to have a thickness of several light years, and if you try to make it more dense in order to fit between the star and the detector, it would collapse into a black hole...

In conclusion, even with insanely advanced futuristic technology, it would simply be impossible to detect a graviton.

What we have been able to detect, though, are gravitational waves. This amazing discovery by the LIGO experiment was announced on February 11 2016. Gravitational waves are made of lots and lots of gravitons, just like electromagnetic waves are made of lots and lots of photons. A typical gravitational wave is composed of roughly 1,000,000,000,000,000 gravitons per cubic centimeter, therefore it is obviously much easier to detect than a single graviton.

On the other hand, we definitely do not have the technology to detect individual gravitons, and unless some new ingenious way to detect them is found, we will never be able to do so even with much more advanced technology.

What are the consequences of this technological impossibility to detect gravitons? As it turns out, it doesn't really matter! Let me explain.

First, where exactly do gravitons appear in physics? Theoretical physicists are trying to combine general relativity and quantum mechanics into a single theory, called quantum gravity. We do not have a final theory of quantum gravity yet, but we are working very hard on it, and we already understand many aspects of what such a theory should be.

In a theory of quantum gravity, gravitons are the quanta of the gravitational field. Therefore, quantum gravity will use gravitons as part of its formulation, just like the theory of quantum electrodynamics uses photons, which are the quanta of the electromagnetic field.

However, we did not confirm quantum electrodynamics experimentally by detecting photons. Quantum electrodynamics produces predictions that are different from those of classical electrodynamics, and by experimentally testing these predictions we have been able to confirm that the electromagnetic field is indeed quantized.

In a similar way, when we finally have a good candidate for a theory of quantum gravity, it will produce predictions that are different from those of classical gravity. By experimentally testing these predictions, we will be able to confirm that the gravitational field is quantized.

In other words, what we need to do is not detect gravitons; we need to test the predictions of a theory of quantum gravity, as soon as we have such a theory. This will indirectly confirm the existence of gravitons.

(Note: this is a duplicate of my answer to Why do we need huge things like LIGO and LISA to measure gravitational waves? Why can't we instead just create a graviton in LHC, where we have been able to create pretty much every known particle.)

What is Consciousness?

From New Scientist August 2016

Metaphysics special: What is consciousness?

How does something as physical as the brain create something as immaterial as your sense of self? It could all just be one big trick of the mind

Francoise Hillemad/plainpicture

By Anil Ananthaswamy

In Cotard’s syndrome, the feeling of existence corrodes but something more fundamental does not (see “How do I know I exist“). Even though people with this rare condition feel they don’t exist, there is still an “I” experiencing that feeling. What is that “I”? One answer is that it may be a by-product of consciousness itself.

René Descartes was convinced that the body and conscious mind are two different substances: the first is made of matter, the latter is immaterial. His ideas influenced neuroscience until a few decades ago, but the field has moved on. Today, it is widely accepted that our brains give rise to consciousness.
But how? That is a raging debate. At its heart is what philosopher David Chalmers at New York University termed the “hard problem” of consciousness: how can physical networks of neurons produce experiences that appear to fall outside the material world? As Thomas Nagel, also at New York University, put it in the 1970s: you could know every detail of the physical workings of a bat’s brain, but still not know what it is like to be a bat.

“You may know beyond a doubt that you exist, but your ‘I’ could still be an illusion“

Broadly speaking, those trying to solve the hard problem fall into two camps, according to psychologist and philosopher Nicholas Humphrey. There are those who think that consciousness is something real and those who say it’s a mirage, and so dismiss the problem entirely.

Mind trickery

The former camp argues that consciousness is a fundamental component of the universe, one that exists alongside matter and has properties which, perhaps conveniently, cannot be explained by our present understanding of physics. If taken to the extreme, says Chalmers, this idea can lead to panpsychism, the view that all matter – even inanimate objects like rocks – is imbued with some degree of consciousness.
Even without tackling that particular Pandora’s box, this camp faces a daunting challenge. We know that conscious thought can influence the body. A conscious desire to move your arm results in physical movement. But the fundamentals of how this happens remain hazy.

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Those on the other side say the hard problem creates one where there is none. “It’s an unsolvable mystery, because the problem is ill posed,” says neuroscientist Michael Graziano of Princeton University. He argues that consciousness is nothing but a trick of the mind. What’s more, the brain doesn’t just create the illusion of consciousness but also the feeling that there is a separate, immaterial “I” having a conscious experience. In other words: there is no need to explain strange interactions between material and immaterial things because the immaterial things don’t really exist.

For Graziano, Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett and other “materialists”, the real issue is not solving the hard problem but explaining how the brain accomplishes this trickery. Graziano resolves this by saying that consciousness is “the brain’s way of describing to itself what it means to pay attention to and deeply process a signal”.
The argument goes like this: we must pay attention to our environment to survive. As a result, our brains have become very skilled at representing the world around us. Somewhere in the course of evolution, they began representing objects as having immaterial properties, and in so doing it generated the mirage of consciousness.
Ultimately, most materialists take the view that after we die and our brains and bodies have decomposed, there is nothing left. That must mean that our prevailing sense of a separate, immaterial “I” was also an illusion.
Which brings us back to the previous question: although you may know beyond doubt that you exist – and indeed it is very possible that you are not a simulation – the “I” you perceive yourself to be could still be an illusion.
This article appeared in print under the headline “What is consciousness?”