We Physicists Are the Only Scientists Who Can Say the Word “God” and Not Blush

Albert Einstein once said something very profound. He said the Universe could have been chaotic, random and ugly—and yet we have this gorgeous synthesis at the origin of the Universe itself, giving birth to the galaxies, the planets, DNA, life. Einstein said that the harmony he sees could not have been an accident. We’re not necessarily talking about the design of humans; we’re not talking about an intervention that gave us eyes, noses and ears, but where did the laws of physics come from?

As you know, I work in something called String Theory which makes the statement that we are reading the mind of God. It’s based on music or little vibrating strings thus giving us particles that we see in nature. The laws of chemistry that we struggled with in high school would be the melodies that you can play on these vibrating strings. The Universe would be a symphony of these vibrating strings and the mind of God that Einstein wrote about at length would be cosmic music resonating through this nirvana… through this 11 dimensional hyperspace—that would be the mind of God. We physicists are the only scientists who can say the word “God” and not blush. 

The fact of the matter is that we are dealing with the cosmic questions of existence and meaning. Thomas Huxley, the great biologist of the last century said that the question of all questions for science and religion is to determine our true place and our true role in the Universe. For both science and religion it is the same question.

However, there has essentially been a divorce in the last century or so between that of science and the Humanists and I think that it’s very sad that we don’t speak the same language anymore.