To be or not to be

Ever since I was a small boy I have been fascinated by matters which I have not had the slightest possibility of understanding. Although I have found this particularly helpful in forming my opinions, and essential in expressing them, it has been a drawback all the same. But please note that modern science backs me up. Take, for example, Werner Heisenberg and his uncertainty principle. Even the name has a certain quality of reassurance for those of us who would like to understand such things as mathematics and physics, but who have always had difficulty in being entirely certain that two and two make four. (When I was at primary school the headmaster informed me that if I couldn't do arithmetic I would never amount to anything. He was quite right - I couldn't and I haven't.)

The uncertainty principle tells us that at the quantum level of reality it is just not possible to be sure about the behaviour of atoms, let alone their constituent parts such as electrons and quarks. And given the fact that atoms are themselves more than ninety-nine per cent empty space, and that the tiny fraction which is something rather than nothing can be described as 'a blur' I can't say I feel too bad about my ignorance.

This is especially so as Heisenberg's successors seem to be approaching the great Somers-Edgar principle which is simply this - the universe doesn't actually exist. Even as a eleven or twelve-year old I had my doubts. I can remember standing at the bottom of Pitt Street at the time when I was still attending Arthur Street School and wondering whether the scene before me was actually the way I percieved it, or if it was even there at all. (I might say that at this point in my life I was drinking nothing stronger than milk.) Perhaps the presence of Knox Church to my left unhinged me somewhat, but I had the same doubts even when I was standing inside St Patrick's Basilica. Nowadays, I must confess, inside all too many churches this is not so much a doubt as a hope.

Clearly something exists in some way or other, but it is not at all clear just what that way might happen to be - especially, it seems, to physicists. Which makes the pious (or impious) certainties of Richard Dawkins and his friends hard to credit. With empty atoms, string theory, the possibility of eleven dimensions (at the last count), imaginary time, quantum mechanics and other scientific propositions, not to mention the theory that the universe divides into millions of complete and separate versions of itself in order to accomodate all possible outcomes - by comparison with all this, believing in God is mere child's play.