THE SUFFICIENCY OF IMPERFECTION


March 15th 2001


The next issue, Number 58, will appear on April 15th 2001.


Three challenging questions are often asked of people who have renounced religious faith. (I am indebted to a reader, who has abandoned religious belief, for drawing these to my attention). The challenges are:

1. The apostate was, it is said, never a "True Believer" in the first place

2. Some other believer, it is said, must have deeply offended the believer who then falls into wounded apostasy. Somebody or something must have sown bitterness in the minds of those who abandon dogmatic belief in favour of a cautiously sceptical approach to problems.

3. You can't, it is claimed, be "de-converted" once you're converted (or born into a religion) - so the apostate is not really a genuine sceptic at all but is merely a self-indulgent 'pretend sceptic'.

If belief were based on evidence then the believer would accept readily the possibility that evidence can always be supplemented by fresh evidence and, hence, that there is always the possibility honestly to change one's mind. It is only because religious belief is emotion-based that a believer would raise such questions as those set out above - would claim implicitly that the very idea of changing one's mind about religion is inadmissible.

The thrust of this essay is to illustrate the point that religious belief is often supported spuriously by citing science; religious apologists are eager to use current scientific ideas to support their presuppositions; 'Scientific Creationism' is a case in point.



When discussing existence - life, the universe and all that - it is customary to resort freely to analogy. That's OK so long as you claim only that analogy is an aid to exposition of ideas; you ought not to pass it off as proof of truth.

Perhaps the most used analogy in this area is that used by Paley in expounding the design theory of the universe. A watch is inferred to have been the product of design because of the perfect congruity of its parts; the universe is presented by Paley as being like that and for the same reason - Design. (Such analogies were questioned by Hume).

Another, more recent, analogy is often used to illustrate the idea of the expanding universe. For comparison, consider a balloon with spots on it; as you inflate the balloon, the spots get bigger, less dense and further apart.The expansion of the universe is thought to be rather like that in some ways. (Note that balloons can burst or they can collapse).

The watch and the spotty balloon are old friends - trusties in the realms of analogy; here is a different model for your consideration. We have all made successful journeys by motor car and, in perhaps all too many cases, the cars have been of poor design and had been poorly maintained and perhaps even not very well driven. Nonetheless we have travelled successfully - we did actually get there - although who knows whether the old banger would have survived a longer journey? This parable of the "sufficiency of imperfection" may serve to shed a cool light upon some of the ideas current in the area of Pious Cosmology.

Pious Cosmologists have used aspects of the Big Bang scenario to support creationist preconceptions. In particular, the very fine balance of forces ..... that maintains the expansion of the universe (rather than letting it collapse into a very small entity) but which keeps that expansion in check (rather than letting the universe burst into unconnected fragments) ....... that balance is so delicately poised that it is extraordinarily improbable for it to have happened by chance. The non-occurrence of both the Big Crunch and the Big Whoosh simply must be, the creationists claim, the result of Design on the part of a conscious Creator.

In passing, it is precisely because even improbable events are possible events that the creationists' assertion that 'it is improbable that it happened by chance ..... therefore it happened by design' ....... is hollow. Improbable events of many kinds occur all the time.

For example, the event that one particular sperm fertilises the egg is improbable to the extent of millions to one against. But one particular sperm did make it on a given occasion and thereby gave rise to a particular 'one of us'. Each one of us is the evidently possible outcome of extreme improbability. Six billion of us - all distinct individuals - and each one is a living demonstration that possibility can prevail over adverse probability!

It may be of interest to wonder why the particular sperm that makes it, does in fact make it. Is it that the Creator intended that particular one to do the business - as part of His Grand Plan, no doubt? If that is so then we have to wonder why He created the billions of purposeless sperms preordained not to do anything. Contrary to Einstein's much quoted quip ...... perhaps God actually does play dice? If He does, then a chance-founded universe may have arisen simply because The Great Punter in the Sky fancied giving it a whirl. Creation by chance may remind us more of Mr Jackson Pollock than of the traditionally accepted Creator ..... but I digress. Let us return to the main topic of this article -" Sufficiency of Imperfection".

Perhaps the values of the determining physical constants of the universe are not quite right to make that universe for ever viable. All we actually know on this point is that the universe is sufficiently viable to have lasted long enough to have engendered ourselves. It seems likely to last a while longer. It is possible that the constants are not such as to make the universe perfectly viable for an indefinitely long time; perhaps we are living in a universe destined, sooner or later, either to crunch or to whoosh - a sufficient universe (for us) but an imperfect one that can last only 'for the time being'. (Even though that time may be very long by our ordinary standards of daily life).

The logically possible imperfect universe is not an arcane notion that can be swept aside lightly. After all, it may well be that the universe has millions of years to run before its possible imperfection makes it crunch or whoosh - and so why worry? Why indeed? Don't worry - but do reflect that the perception of 'the imperfect universe' might lead us to postulate an imperfect designer-creator (supposing that we postulate a designer-creator at all).

At a stroke, such a perception undermines the emotional basis upon which the appeal of creationism rests - the notion of ultimate perfection rather than the notion of having to make shift with the possible "sufficiency of imperfection".

Reverting to the matter of chance events, it seems obvious that, while the perfectly tuned universe is very improbable, the number of more or less viable imperfectly tuned universes is, comparatively, quite large and so the balance of probability is that we actually have one of the imperfect ones. The imperfect car (in my little parable) did actually 'get us there'; there are many such imperfect cars.

People are religious mainly from a subjective need for ultimate certainty and security. A sufficient, but dodgy, universe - perhaps the work of a dodgy creator - may make sense but it scarcely makes comfort; it subverts comfort. Hence the religious potency of the superfluous idea of the perfectly tuned universe that the creationists are pressing upon anxious believers. The New Faithful start with their creationist suppositions and are intent upon tidying up, taming, the Big Bang model to comply with that prior commitment. They are attempting to rewrite the empirically based 'science story' with an emotionally based neo-scriptural story - a pseudo-scientific creationist folk tale.

You can entertain the notion of possibility prevailing over adverse probability; you can entertain the notion of the sufficiency of imperfection. Emerging scepticism should not allow itself to be tugged back by the tendrils of ruffled piety.

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