The Spin-Doctored Universe

Although I have a mind that veers more toward the artistic than the scientific, I have been obsessed by the "why" questions about the universe since childhood. I'm fascinated with quantum mechanics and what the theory has to say about reality and try to keep up to date on the latest non-scientific writing about it. And of course with this background, I feel eminently qualified to comment on the latest study about the origins of the universe.

While this interview on "The Self-Made Universe" with theoretical physicist Paul Davies is interesting, it doesn't do much to answer the big question of why the universe seems so fine-tuned for the emergence of intelligent life.

"In essence, what happens when we make measurements or observations of the universe today, we’re resolving some of the quantum ambiguity that exists in the past....

"In that manner, what we must imagine is that the origin of the universe is an amalgam of realities, and only those realities that lead to observers who can resolve those ambiguities are going to be selected for.

"Although this sounds very radical, it’s a very old idea. It goes back at least 30 years...."

Isn't this theory of backward causation nothing more than the ultimate spin-doctoring on the origins of the universe? We've known for a long time that the presence of the observer determines what is observed, so what's the news here? Davies studies seem to shed more light on the role of the observer than actually telling us anything new about how the universe came to be the way it is.

Scientists are struggling with the question of why the universe is a place where life exists, when even the slightest variation in how the Big Bang played out would have made this impossible.

I don't think the intelligent design theory completely answers this question either. It's deeper than that. My thoughts on the origin and nature of the universe are closer to what one of those who commented on the article wrote:

"Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit and anthropologist suggested that consciousness was intrinsic to the universe, much like matter, space and time; it was not inserted into the universe nor did it accidentally pop up a few billion years ago. Evolution, to him, was a process of restructuring matter/consciousness into 'higher' forms through space and time. Early on, at the Big Bang, the potency for our level of consciousness was part of the universe in a way that the potency for a tree is intrinsic in a seed. To him, matter (in space/time) in any form has an intrinsic aspect of consciousness."

...which is to say, I'm in agreement with mystics everywhere.