The Rev. George V. Coyne
Posted on 04/27/2006 7:33:08 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
In a lively lecture on big questions about science, faith and the evolution of the cosmos, the director of the Vatican Observatory told a packed auditorium at the AAAS [the American Association for the Advancement of Science] on 27 March that science is quite capable of explaining the remarkable complexity of the natural world without reference to an intelligent designer.
The Rev. George V. Coyne said modern science has revealed a cosmos shaped by the interplay of randomness and necessity over the nearly 14 billion years since the Big Bang, a world of such fertile chemical variety that the emergence of life was inevitable.
Coyne argues that intelligent design—the notion that there is empirical evidence for the existence of an intelligent agent beyond nature—actually belittles God by requiring divine action to explain unresolved questions about the material world.
Modern science provides "a challenge, an enriching challenge, to traditional beliefs about God," he says. "God lets the world be what it will be in its continuous evolution." God did not make a universe "predetermined, all set up," Coyne told the AAAS gathering. "The universe shares in God’s own creativity."
The apparent directionality of evolution, from the simple to the more complex, in both celestial objects and life forms is the result of natural processes that occurred, hit and miss, in a universe with at least 10 sextillion (or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars. From the outset, he said, random encounters between atoms were governed by necessary laws of physics and chemistry.
"Take two hydrogen atoms in the very early universe," Coyne said. "They meet one another and by force, by necessity—no chance about it—the laws of nature are such that those two atoms have to make a hydrogen molecule," Coyne said. "That’s what chemical bonding is all about."
Even if the two hydrogen atoms in question were unable to bond because pressure and temperature conditions were not quite right, there were trillions of others doing the same dance. "So why should you be surprised that a few hundred times, a few billion times, a hydrogen molecule is created," asks Coyne.
Eventually, giant clouds of gas and dust formed. As clouds broke apart, dense regions collapsed to form stars. The thermonuclear furnaces at the core of those stars transformed lighter elements into heavier elements such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and iron. As stars die, they spew those heavier elements into the universe. Under the right conditions, those elements can combine to form ever more complex molecules, including the building blocks of life. This growing chemical complexity, Coyne said, eventually gave rise to humans.
"If this were not happening, you and I would not be here," Coyne said. "That’s a scientific fact." It makes sense, he said, that "the human brain came to be through this process of chemical complexification."
Coyne spoke as part of a lecture series sponsored by AAAS's Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER). The Coyne lecture drew attendees from the Astrobiology Science Conference 2006, which advertised the lecture as a special AAAS event for registrants. Coyne also participated in a panel on public perceptions of evolution during the 26-30 March astrobiology conference in Washington. The panel was co-organized by Connie Bertka, the director of DoSER, who also gave a plenary presentation on responding to the intelligent design movement. AAAS established DoSER in 1995 to promote communication between scientific and religious communities. The program builds on AAAS's long-standing commitment to relate scientific knowledge and technological development to the purposes and concerns of society at large.
Coyne, a Jesuit priest, joined the Vatican Observatory as an astronomer in 1969 and became director in 1978. He also has had a long association with the University of Arizona, which hosts the Vatican Observatory Research Group at its Steward Observatory.
The notion that chance events play a large role in the workings of the natural world can be unsettling, even to some scientists. Physicist Albert Einstein, dissatisfied with the randomness and uncertainty at the heart of quantum mechanics, once remarked famously that God "does not play dice." But Coyne notes the rejoinder by an eminent molecular biologist who said God does play dice but only after "loading the dice.’’
According to Coyne, God made a universe with a certain dynamism that plays outs over time. Science, in its efforts to explain the evolution of the natural world, is completely neutral on whether there are any theistic or atheistic implications from that process, he says.
Coyne has criticized the claim by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna that neo-Darwinian evolution is incompatible with Catholic doctrine. Coyne said Schonborn’s embrace of the "intelligent design" movement represents a "tragic" episode in the relationship of the Roman Catholic Church to science.
"One gets the impression from certain religious believers that they fondly hope for the durability of certain gaps in our scientific knowledge of evolution, so that they can fill them with God," Coyne has written. But if religious believers respect the results of modern science, he says, they must "move away from the notion of a dictator God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly."
For Coyne, religious faith and scientific pursuits coexist quite comfortably. "This scientific knowledge of the universe enriches my faith," he said. It is a faith marked by a very personal relationship with God, he said, one that is not derived from the rational methodologies of science. "It’s a free, gratuitous gift" from God, he said.
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bump for later, sounds like an interesting read
IBGF
How about IBSBR (In Before the Smoky Back Room).
I had posted this in the "News" forum. I don't know how it ended up in Religion.
It was only yesterday that I told you our paths were unlikely to cross, because I don't post in your forum, yet here I am. Unless you can move this to "News," where I had intended to post it, I guess you're stuck with me for the duration.
Coyne argues that intelligent design—the notion that there is empirical evidence
for the existence of an intelligent agent beyond nature—actually belittles God
by requiring divine action to explain unresolved questions about the material world.
Modern science provides "a challenge, an enriching challenge, to traditional beliefs about God,"
he says. "God lets the world be what it will be in its continuous evolution."
God did not make a universe "predetermined, all set up," Coyne told the AAAS gathering.
"The universe shares in God’s own creativity."
He could learn a lot by reading some of the writings of Gerald Schroeder. It is truly sad to see his lack of faith in the Creator of the Universe.
b'shem Y'shua
Applause! In my view, this is very well stated indeed.
This does appear quite out of place in the religion forum.
Then again, the concept of a "Vatican astronomer" is even harder to grasp.
The fact that he quite clearly knows what he's talking about makes the discovery all the more thrilling, though.
Does Rome believe the the 6 day Creation?
In Before the Garden Fairies.
Have you read the Bible? And on the seventh day He rested.
This is much worse than the backroom. Folks in the backroom treat each other with a bit of respect.
As do I, but this article seems to discount Genesis.
Yeah, you tell 'em!
I guess this place has its own moderator for a reason. For a look at the rules which are applied here, they were posted this week (in the lead article):
Greetings from your Religion Moderator.
Excellent article.
Coincidentially, I just wrote this post on another thread which touches on the same subject:
Despite the perception on these threads, most scientists that I have personally met or have read about are religious, or have some measure of faith. Sure, there are some atheists and agnostics. But there are some Hindus and Sihks also. It takes all kinds. A great many of them would wholeheartedly agree with you on your sense of purpose. Science, though, isn't the right tool for looking for purpose. Science looks for mechanisms, seeks to quantify things. The Creator, by definition, cannot be quantified. For purpose, one has to look elsewhere: to faith, to philosophy.
It's a matter of using the right tool for the job. Using the wrong too for a job can make the job harder, give erroneous results, or blow up in your face. The most common result might be that the tool breaks. Really, that's what science is: it's a tool. It's a tool for describing the physical world in such a way as to produce predictable results.
Like any tool, it can be misused. Some people who like to raise fear and doubt about science raise the spectre of the holocaust. But the holocaust was the fault of the Nazis, not science. It is the people who performed the horrid experiments who lacked moral judgement, not science itself. Science is a tool, and one cannot expect a tool to have a moral sense. One might as well expect morals from a hammer or inclined plane. It is the people who do science who must have ethics. Professional ethics within science and engineering are huge issues. One only need consider Morton Thiokol engineer Roger Boisjoly to understand this point. (Mr. Boisjoly attempted to raise issues internally to NASA about the O-ring seals on the Challenger.)
It is people who must have a moral or ethical sense, and for this tool philosophy and religion are the right "tool for the job." Unlike someome of the sentiments expressed around here, science and religion aren't mutually exclusive, they are complimentary. Each answers questions that the other is ill equipped to deal with. At the root of the issue, the reason scientists object to the teaching of "intelligent design" in science class is because it ultimately begs the question of purpose. If we were designed, why? This is not a proper question for scientific analysis. It is the realm of theology and philosophy. A great many scientists and engineers believe in a higher purpose, only that science is not the right tool for discerning it.
Those atheists at the Vatican ... at it again.
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