Posted on 11/12/2005 8:19:25 AM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo
In 1995, a solar eclipse he saw in India made him think about Earth’s unique place in the universe — a place designed to be able to study such phenomenon. Though there was no “Eureka!” moment, Gonzalez felt strongly that chance couldn’t explain Earth’s privileged position. And last year, Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards, another fellow at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, published The Privileged Planet.
Currently, Gonzalez has been busy fighting intellectual battles on campus (See sidebar.) and continuing his own research on the Galactic Habitable Zone — the part of the galaxy that seems to have the right conditions to support life: conditions that all together, he says, are very rare.
Taking time out of his astrobiology studies and stepping out of the debate for a moment, Gonzalez talks about why he is an intelligent design astronomer and how that lets him travel in an unbounded universe.
What is your definition of intelligent design?
Intelligent design is the study and search for objective evidence of design in nature. It holds that certain features of nature are best explained by an intelligent cause.
When did you start thinking about intelligent design?
It’s hard to pin a precise year on it. I gradually became interested in the idea of possible evidence of design in nature, in astronomy in particular. I was interested in reading about fine-tuning.
The fine-tuning argument basically is that the concept of physics requires being set within certain narrow ranges for the possibility of life in the universe. And so fine-tuning makes this a very low-probability universe.
And with the anthropic principle, you have to come to terms with that observation.
Basically there are two camps: One camp says that it’s just an observer selection effect. And we’ve just selected this universe out of a vast ensemble of habitable universes. The other camp says that intelligent design is the best explanation, since we have no evidence for any such vast ensemble of universes.
How do use intelligent design in your research?
My argument that I wrote up with Jay Richards we presented in our book, The Privileged Planet; it’s a completely original argument. We present the discovery that I made around the late ’90s, where I noticed that those places in the universe that are most habitable for life also offer the best opportunities for scientific discovery. That seems completely unexplainable in terms of the usual naturalistic causes. So, intelligent design is the only alternative.
We actually drew that out a bit and further implied that the universe is designed for scientific discovery. So science is built into the fabric of the universe from the very beginning.
What is the most compelling example of design in the universe?
The first example I thought of was the solar eclipse. The conditions you need to produce a solar eclipse also make Earth a habitable planet.
The other one that really intrigues me is being able to detect microwave background radiation. Microwave background radiation is the leftover radiation from that early epoch when the universe was much hotter and denser. It was the deciding observation between the steady-state theory and the big-bang theory. Our ability to discover it and then measure it subsequently is very sensitive to our location in the galaxy, and also the time and history of the universe that we live in.
What does using ID allow you to do that current scientific inquiry doesn’t allow for?
I asked and continue to ask kinds of questions that a naturalist wouldn’t ask. For example, if we were living on a different planet, or around a different star, or in a different place in the galaxy, how would things look different, and what kind of scientific progress would we have?
It’s a perfectly reasonable set of questions — it’s just a set of questions that hasn’t occurred to anybody else to ask. I think it’s because they haven’t been open to the possibility of design, or getting an affirmative answer, which would point to design.
How would you construct a research program around this?
I could imagine having a student do a Ph.D. thesis asking the question: What is the best time in the history of the universe to be a cosmologist? They can modify that using the standard cosmological models. They can find out if we are, in fact, living at the best time, or if it’s a distant time from now. It’ll be interesting to find out the answer to that.
How does your faith affect your research?
I am a Christian. I’ve had a strong intuition from a very early age that there had to be something behind all this.
It makes me open to discovering the possibility of design, but I don’t impose my faith on the data. I’m constantly reminding myself of my own personal biases so I don’t inject them into research. But at the same time, I have a very open mind to seeing evidence that may not fit into the nice, neat categories provided by naturalism.
Why does science need the concept of intelligent design?
It’s not something that a priori needs the concept of intelligent design. Here’s something I stumbled upon and I discovered this pattern in the universe. It just screams out for another kind of explanation. It’s not that I’m saying that the universe must display evidence of design, or I must be able to find something to fit that. I stumbled upon this and I can’t explain it in the usual terms.
How does this alternate explanation of design in the universe lend itself to theology?
I’d like to try to keep my work in intelligent design separate from discussions of the implications of intelligent design. As an ID researcher, I know my limitations. You can say, “Okay, I think I’ve identified design in the universe, and here is the evidence.” And that’s it. I can’t identify the designer uniquely.
If you want to partake into the theological discussion, let’s bring in theological elements into it. Then it becomes broader than intelligent design.
I can imagine expanding this discussion, writing a second book just discussing the implications — bringing in aesthetics, philosophy and theology, which are less objective. But in our book, we wanted to keep the theology separate from the science.
Why do you need an intelligent >design paradigm to explain the natural world?
As a scientist looking out at nature, I want to be open to possible evidence that a designer exists. If I say ahead of time, “Well, I’m not going to allow the universe to present objective evidence,” then you’re never going to be open to it. It’s like the SETI [Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence] researchers who say, “The probability of life in the universe may be small, but if we don’t look we’ll never know.”
At the beginning of the 20th century, virtually all scientists believed the universe was eternal. Then came the shock of the big-bang theory with the evidence of the expansion of the universe. They had to actually consider the possibility the universe had a beginning. So, the universe can surprise us. I would rather be more open to the possibility of being surprised.
Is this the suggestion you would give the scientific community about intelligent design?
Scientists, who may not even be design-friendly, may stumble upon design evidence, and I’m just hopeful that they’re open-minded enough to just present it and admit that they stumbled upon it.
Julia C. Keller is the science editor of Science and Theology News.
ID Ping
Now, I'm not sure why any theory of creation or evolution should be taught to kids who can barely read or do math, but, if you want to teach the Bible, which I have no objection to, this is the wrong approach.
What's the right approach? I'm glad you asked. Overturn this "separation of church and state" idiocy, which isn't in the constitution and is the creation of anti-religious liberals, then just teach the Bible in those localities that want it. Simple.
Astronomer/theologian Hugh Ross at Reasons to Believe agrees. He is the leading Christian old-earth progressive creationist. That's why he and associate biochemist Fazale Rana have developed their testable [thus falsifiable] creation model. Dr. Gonzales is a friend and associate of theirs.
If interested, visit reasons.org.
Here's another one you might find interesting!
Your argument's only flaw is we do not know for certain that there is life on Pluto (ok it is a stretch but still...)
You could have used the example that the Earth eclispes the Moon all the time and yet there is no life there.
Besides... what do eclipses have to do with forming life anyway? Maybe he means there needs to be a Moon to create tides and stuff. I dunno.
I was scratching my head over that one too.
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the difference between philosophy and theology is that philosophy begins in man whereas theology begins in God.
Wow are you joking me???? First Amendment states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The establishment clause prohibits the government from passing legislation to establish an official religion or preferring one religion over another. Also known as "separation of church and state".
If you ever go to Phila, please... please... please... go to the new Constitution center and educate yourself. Serious...
This phrase is an incessant cheap among the evobirdies. Is it a neologism, or does it simply mean, "it cannot be proven false"? Either way, it won't work as an incantation to wave away opposition.
Evolution serves as a superb paradigm in educating new biology students into the structure and categorization of plant and animal nature. Family tree, if you will. As a paradigm, we can't do without it.
Other than that--you start getting into what looks a lot like dogma. We all remember the hilarious "march to homosapiens" pictures which were supposed to convince us all that one species springs fortuitously from another--all the way from a spider monkey (with tail!) to the guy in the grey flannel suit.
And a lot of us remember that chart becoming defunct, and large questionings opening up about the actual descent of man. But we were supposed to cling to the underlying theory of progressive speciation on pain of being called "nutcases" or "knuckledraggers" "fundamentalist nose-pickers" or any such insult designed to guard against a teaching franchise being threatened!
I happen to think the obvious and least painful solution is for a scientist to behave like a scientist, and not deal in dogma at all, but deal in the limitations of the speciation stories. There's so much to teach about flora and fauna--stop playing evo priest.
And the way evos behave on the FR board lead me to believe that it is priesthood they are after--they want to preach what they want to preach and deal with no heresies. Watching them here over the past few years, looking at their posting histories (they generally post to few threads other than evo-crevo issues) and their arrogant tone--they don't even seem to be interested in conservatism itself, just in having the opportunity to find conservative Christians and rattle their cages.
All I can think of is that it was thought that tides from the Moon's pull created an environment where primordial life could form in the clay "cups". But that would imply evolutionary beginnings so... can't be that.
Actually, the bible says essentially the same thing:
2 Peter 3:8 - But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
Q #1: Is the fact that we can see “perfect” solar eclipses related to our existence?
A: The Earth’s surface provides the best view of solar eclipses in the Solar System. The Earth’s surface is also the most habitable place in the Solar System. Is this coincidence just that? In The Privileged Planet, we argue that it isn’t. The conditions that make a planet habitable also make its inhabitants more likely to see solar eclipses.
The first example I thought of was the solar eclipse. The conditions you need to produce a solar eclipse also make Earth a habitable planet.
This is the point where my BS meter pegged. The sizes of the lunar and solar disks as seen from Earth is pure cosmic happenstance. We are lucky that the similarity of those apparent sizes makes eclipses spectacular. This coincidence has no effect whatever on the development of life. If it did, then why don't we get serious environmental effects from annular eclipses?
I'm not completely sure what Gonzalez is getting at here, but your arrogant dismissal of his point doesn't hide the complexity of aligning the axis of the sun/earth orbit and the moon/earth orbit and the distance of the sun, moon and earth required to create the solar eclipse. A phenomenon that Gonzalez is unwilling to attribute to the big bang. Just because Gonzalez continues to question phenomenon that you dismiss doesn't deprive you of your determination to cling to your dogma.
Which makes Dogbarktree's point:
"He who knows that he knows, doesn't really know. He who knows that he doesn't know, knows."
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