What about string theory?

Question 60052.

String theory comes up in church conversations more often than you might expect, usually because somebody has watched a documentary and wants to know whether it undermines Genesis. It is a proposal in theoretical physics which suggests that the fundamental constituents of matter are not point particles but tiny vibrating filaments, and that the different particles we observe are different vibrational patterns of the same underlying thing.

My short answer is that Christians can relax about it, though not because it is unimportant. It is because string theory belongs to a category of question that Scripture does not address, and because the doctrines that matter are untouched by whatever the physicists eventually conclude.

What string theory proposes

Physics has two enormously successful descriptions of reality that do not fit together. General relativity describes gravity and the behaviour of very large things. Quantum mechanics describes the very small. Both work beautifully in their own domains and produce nonsense when applied to situations where both should apply at once, such as the interior of a black hole.

String theory is one attempt at a reconciliation. By treating the basic entities as extended objects rather than points, some of the mathematical infinities that wreck the calculations disappear. The price is steep. The equations require additional spatial dimensions, usually ten or eleven in total, which are supposed to be curled up too small to detect.

That is the honest state of play. String theory is mathematically elegant, it has occupied some of the finest minds of the last forty years, and it has so far produced no experimental prediction that has been tested and confirmed. Serious physicists disagree sharply about whether it counts as science in the ordinary sense or as an extremely sophisticated piece of mathematics awaiting contact with the world.

What Scripture says about the created order

The Bible is not a physics textbook and does not pretend to be. What it tells us is who made everything, that He made it from nothing by His word, that He upholds it continually, and that it is not eternal or self existing. Hebrews says that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. You can read that at Hebrews 11:3.

Paul tells the Colossians that in Jesus all things hold together, using the verb sunistemi, to hold or stand together, in a form suggesting continuous action. Whatever the deepest layer of physical structure turns out to be, whether strings or something not yet imagined, Scripture has already told us who is holding it in place.

So the question of whether reality bottoms out in strings, loops or something else is a question about the mechanism, and Christianity has never had a stake in any particular mechanism. It has a stake in the Maker.

Does string theory threaten anything we believe?

Take the extra dimensions first, since they generate the most excitement. Additional spatial dimensions would be a feature of the created order, no more theologically startling than the discovery of radio waves. God is not located in a dimension, and adding six more to the diagram does not crowd Him or explain Him.

I would gently warn against the opposite enthusiasm too. Some Christians have seized on extra dimensions as an explanation of heaven, of angelic appearances or of the resurrection body, and built quite elaborate structures on them. That is speculation dressed as exposition. If string theory is abandoned in twenty years, as it may be, any doctrine that has been welded to it will come down with it.

The one genuine concern is the multiverse, which some versions of string theory suggest, with an immense number of possible universes each with different physical constants. That idea is often deployed to answer the fine tuning argument for a designer, and it is worth noticing that it is deployed for exactly that reason.

The multiverse and the fine tuning question

The fine tuning observation is simply that the constants of physics sit within extraordinarily narrow ranges compatible with life, and that a tiny variation in several of them would produce a universe with no chemistry, no stars and no observers. The theistic reading is that this looks like the work of a mind.

The multiverse reply is that if there are enough universes with enough variation, one of them was bound to look like ours, and naturally we find ourselves in the habitable one. Logically that works. What is often not admitted is that it purchases the answer at the cost of postulating an unobservable and possibly infinite array of universes, which is a considerable act of faith by any measure.

So the argument does not end there, and Christians need not be intimidated. Even granting a multiverse, one has to ask where the generating mechanism came from and why it exists rather than nothing. The question of an uncaused cause does not go away; it simply moves house.

How to think about science generally

The pattern I would commend is this. Hold the teaching of Scripture firmly, hold current scientific models loosely, and be careful about tying the first to the second. The church has been embarrassed before by pinning theology to a scientific consensus that later shifted, and it has also been embarrassed by rejecting well established findings out of nervousness.

Psalm 19 says the heavens declare the glory of God, which is an invitation to look rather than a warning to look away. Christians ought to be among the most curious people alive, since we believe the universe is the work of a rational Maker and is therefore intelligible. That conviction is, historically, part of why modern science began where it did.

I have written more on the general relationship in whether science can contradict the Bible and on the specific pressure points in what about the age of the earth.

Speculation and the limits of what we know

There is a temptation in every generation to use the newest science as a decoder ring for Scripture, and string theory has attracted more than its share of that. I have read confident explanations of the Trinity in terms of extra dimensions, of the ascension as a shift between branes, and of the new creation as a change in the compactified geometry. It is imaginative and it is not exegesis.

Paul warns Timothy against being taken up with speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith, which you will find at 1 Timothy 1:4. That is not a prohibition on thinking. It is a warning about where the centre of gravity should sit, and a reminder that no congregation was ever built up by a sermon on eleven dimensions.

Deuteronomy puts it memorably: the secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children. That verse gives us both permission to investigate and a boundary marker for our conclusions.

The universe had a beginning

One thing worth holding on to through all the debate is that the scientific consensus of the last century moved decisively towards a universe with a beginning. That was resisted at first, and the name Big Bang was originally a term of mockery, precisely because a beginning has uncomfortable implications for anyone who would prefer the cosmos to be eternal and self explanatory.

Genesis 1:1 does not tell us the mechanism and it does tell us the direction: in the beginning God created. Whatever string theory or its successors eventually say about the fabric of things, the question of why there is something rather than nothing sits outside physics altogether, because any physical explanation will itself be part of the something that needs explaining.

That is not a proof, and I would not pretend it is. It is a reminder that the deepest question in the room is not one that a better equation will answer.

A closing word on humility

Whatever happens to string theory over the next generation, and it may quietly fade as other candidate theories are developed, the episode is a useful lesson in how to hold ideas. Confident predictions have been made in both directions. Physicists have announced that the final theory was within reach, and Christians have announced that a scientific model proved or disproved a doctrine.

Both kinds of announcement age badly. The safer posture is to know what Scripture actually claims, which is less about mechanism than most people assume, and to follow the science with genuine interest and no anxiety. God is not waiting nervously to see how the experiments turn out.

So, now what?

If a friend raises string theory as an objection to faith, the useful move is to ask what exactly they think it disproves. Most of the time the answer is vague, because the theory does not in fact address the existence of God at all. Getting that into the open calmly is more effective than trying to become an amateur physicist over one conversation.

And if you are a Christian who works in the sciences, do not let anybody make you feel that your curiosity is a spiritual liability. You are reading a book God wrote. What have you learned recently that made you want to worship?

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Psalm 19:1, ESV