Science tells us that everything is made from particles and forces, but this does not tell us why these things exist or where they come from.

Everything is particles and forces

According to science, the four forces of nature and the seventeen elementary particles, aka Materialism, describe everything. Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder says:

Aristotle said: ‘the whole is more than the sum of its parts.’ but, according to the prevailing scientific theory, this is wrong. Countless experiments have confirmed that if you know what the smaller parts do, you can tell what the large things do. There isn’t a single known exception to this. Composite systems – brains, society, the universe, all derive their behaviour from the smaller parts. ‘The whole is the sum of its parts.’ This means that you, your sense of self, your personality, your ambitions and aspirations, are merely the product of particles moving around your body and brain. The particles connect to create systems that produce feelings, emotions, thoughts, behaviours and attitudes. 

So there, the science tells us there is no need for Gods, souls or spirits. However, many people have questioned whether the qualia of our life experience can really be reduced to particles and forces. Can our awareness of beauty, aesthetics and interpretation be adequately described so reductively? Well, let’s ask a snail, a snake, or a hippopotamus. But, the scientists say, let’s ask a delphinium, a mushroom, or an oak tree. What are their qualia’s of experience? Do they stare at sunsets in sheer amazement at their mesmerising beauty? They are conscious in ways to a lessor or greater degree to humans, yet we don’t assign the same life experiences humans have to them. 

Imagination is to blame for it all

The qualia of experience then, is purely a human affair which is firmly rooted in our propensity to imagine. Human imagination can be traced back, according to Dr Andrew Vyshedskiy, to a genetic mutation in two or more children around 70,000 years ago in the Swabian Jura. Astonishingly, it is believed that only a few children, perhaps only two, were born with this mutated gene, which then took hold in the population and manifests itself in the first art and creative thought. From those humble beginnings, everything that humanity has created is derived, including the capacity to wonder about our existence and debate where our qualia of experience comes from. 

That is the end of the story according to science. As difficult as it is to believe, we are just products of serendipitous forces acting blindly, with the sole purpose of reproduction. The gift of imagination, unique to human beings, has concocted all manner of Creation myths, all manner of Gods, some alive and others, well, not so. And just to be clear, there is no evidence at all of supernatural deities manifesting themselves before (or after), this 70,000 year evolutionary landmark and leaving evidence in the fossil records. Being omnipotent, I assume they could have if they wanted to. No, the only reason we are able to pontificate origin stories and Creation myths, is because of the genetic accident of imagination and recursive language. Wherever you look, whenever you look, it all comes back to particles and forces, systems and processes acting in the moment in the great race for life.

A BIG but

Science is an incredible tool that has brought humanity incredible insights and achievements. I have no wish to live in a supernatural superstitious world. Rationality and reason are finer bedfellows than Gods, ghouls and demons. Penicillin beats prayer any day of the week. But, from my own study of the scientific consensus, I have been left to the only conclusion that cold, stark materialism is a blind alley; a product of an atheistic determination to break free from the shackles of orthodox religion. Here’s why. 

The sheer size and scale of the Universe

The visible Universe is 93 billion light years across. What lies beyond it is unknown, but some physicists even postulate that more universes exist outside of ours. It is a colossal entity. It’s a stupendous, jaw dropping vast realm that is almost impossible to get your head around. What we can see of it is arranged in a cosmic web comprising of filaments of galaxy clusters and gases, akin to the structure of a living slime mould. What’s more, the building blocks of life (amino acids etc.) are being pumped around these filament pathways on asteroids, and light, the bringer of life to our planet, permeates every aspect of this huge universal organism. 

Our galaxy, and millions of other galaxies, are flowing through the universal medium of space in a vast, cosmic, three-dimensional river, towards a galactic supercluster called The Great Attractor, which has the mass of trillions of suns and which pulls galaxies towards it across thousands of light years. We are like electron-sized specs of matter, living on an atom, that forms a galaxy-sized molecule, within an artery of energy, flowing towards an incomprehensible organ.

There’s no reason to suppose our sun is unique. If our sun radiates life, then other suns must bring similar life to any number of the trillions of exoplanets circulating the vast numbers of stars in the universe. This whole, gigantic megastructure we call the universe, is literally alive.

Fine tuning

In addition to the jaw-dropping size of the universe, close examination of those four forces and seventeen particles that define all of materialistic realism reveals some startling facts. They all depend on a host of physical constants, and intricate values that are so finely balanced, that a single variation either way would cause all of matter to collapse and not exist. The whole universe is built on such fine tunings and no one knows why. Just a tiny alteration in the strength of even one of nature’s myriad of elementary forces would render the Universe devoid of stars, planets and life. Life, it seems, has been finely tuned to within a billionth of the width of an atom. The odds of this being a happy accident are trillions upon trillions to one. Some might say impossible even. 

Bizarre nature of reality

Further more, the universe is full empty space that is known as dark matter, dark energy, or in other words, dark dunno-what-it-is-ness. No one knows what 95% of the universe is, what it does, or why it’s there. Then there are lots and lots of black holes that suck matter in, like cosmic plug holes, that no one knows are for, or where all the stuff that goes into them goes to. 

And, it doesn’t get much better here on Earth. Everything looks pretty real enough, until you start looking beneath the surface. Under the hood, everything that we think of as real, is actually made up of similar voids and spaces; interacting fields of energy – localised disturbances in quantum fields – nothing linking to nothingness. Don’t even get me started on quantum particles that can be in two places at once, be different states of matter at the same time, or only exist if they’re being observed. Quantum mechanics tells us that while we are not looking, such particles behave very differently from when we are looking. Even the universe itself seems to be expanding at different rates according to how you observe it. It’s as if reality is making it up as it goes along. No wonder some thinkers have likened the universe to a giant simulation – a cosmic computer game with us as its leading part.

Improbable odds 

The chances of the universe existing and supporting life are just stupendous. The idea that it popped into existence by itself, from a subatomic, singular particle to an organism 93 billion light years across, with no overarching force engineering it, is a particular kind of arrogance that only atheists have. When you combine the sheer size of the universe with the scale of the improbability behind the fine tuning numbers behind its structure, and the bizarre, ethereal nature of reality, you get a fact that is staring us in the face – the universe isn’t here by chance. It has been engineered. It has been put here by something unknown and maybe even unknowable (in my opinion). That the cosmic designer doesn’t make itself known in obvious revelatory ways is another of my own opinions, and this belief resonates with ancient Chinese philosophies, particularly Taoism, which says the universe is unknowable, and reality is an ineffable mystery.  

So, what does it all mean?

Science has to continue. Rationality has to prevail. I don’t want to open a Pandora’s box into Woo-Woo world. But, accepting that we are akin to a tiny particle, living on a small atom, inside a vast superstructure, should permeate our everyday existence. If I were an conscious carbon atom forming part of a protein molecule inside a human body, and I was unable to detect other similar molecules; how would I know that I played a crucial role in regulating the physiology of the body? I might at first detect other molecules nearby, I might then observe that I am situated in an alveoli of the lung, and from there a bronchiole, but I still would not be able to fathom what a lung was, let alone a living, thinking organism. 

However much atheist scientists want to denounce it, spirituality plays an important role in many people’s lives and it isn’t going away. We have to find a middle ground between spirituality and science. In South Asia, in India, people balance these opposing forces quite naturally, and there is little conflict between the two. Islam, like Christianity, often struggles to incorporate liberal, progressive scientific ideas that undermine their beliefs. But, far Eastern countries historically place less emphasis on divinity as a rule, and so it doesn’t seem to be an issue for them. I’m reading a great book by Julian Baggini called How the World Thinks, and it’s an enlightening read that I think is really informative. Hopefully, I’ll find some personal answers to my own internal struggles, and then be in a better place to articulate them. However, it may be that, as the Taoists say, the universe is unknowable, and we just have to live with it. In the meantime, different faiths, attitudes and belief systems, all need to learn to live in peace and harmony.