Posted on 10/20/2003 10:49:13 AM PDT by yonif
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http://www.aish.com/societyWork/sciencenature/Seeing_God_in_the_Physics_Lab.asp |
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Seeing God in the Physics Lab
That is to say:
The Lord is One. (Deut. 6:4)
There is nothing else. (Deut. 4:35, 39)
"I am wisdom.... The Lord acquired me [wisdom] as the beginning of His way, the first of His works of old." (Proverbs 8:12, 22).
The bit [of information] has given rise to the it [of the item]. (J. A. Wheeler)
E=mc2 (A. Einstein)
On that day the Lord shall be One and His name One. (Zechariah 14:9)
Imagine I could somehow acquire a cookbook of the physics and chemistry of what was going to be a universe -- all the laws of nature. And I was told that for some bizarre reason during the universe's formation, the self-annihilation of particle/anti-particle pairs that form while energy of the big bang creation condenses into matter would not be total. So therefore some particles of matter would survive that annihilation.
Then, based on those laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe, I could predict that through the alchemy of stellar temperatures and the immense pressures of supernova, the 92 stable elements that would form. I'd know that among those elements would be sodium and chlorine. I could predict that they would chemically react to form sodium chloride, common salt.
All that would be known from first principles -- the reductionist approach to analysis.
But could I predict that in some marvelous combination of the building blocks of matter -- the protons and neutrons and electrons that make up atoms, and then the atoms that combine to form molecules -- that I'd find a mind with its self-consciousness of joy, sentience, awareness of emotions.
Consider: In one mix of protons, neutrons and electrons I get a grain of sand. I take the same protons, neutrons and electrons, put them together in a different mix and get a brain that can record facts, produce emotions, and from which emerges a mind that integrates those facts and emotions -- and experiences that integration as joy.
It's the same protons, neutrons and electrons. They did not get a face-lift, yet one combination seems passive while the other is dynamically alive.
From where does this consciousness arise? Just which proton is feeling the joy or anguishing over the pain as I stub my toe on some unseen object?
From where does the complex order inherent in every form of life arise?
It is not evident in the particles that make up the atoms or in the molecules that those atoms combine to form.
SOURCE OF DNA INFORMATION
Most laypeople are unaware that life started immediately on the once molten earth. The earth formed from the debris of previous supernovae. As that stellar dust was drawn together by the force of gravity into the ball that was to become our planet earth, the friction was so great that the earth melted.
Over time the surface of our planet cooled. The temperature gradually fell to the level at which liquid water could form, and at that time the first forms of life appeared on earth, made from the rocks and water that were once stardust.
There were not billions of years between the formation of the cooled earth and the appearance of life. According to all geological data, life started immediately on earth. How? From where did all the amazing complexly arranged order that goes into even the simplest forms of life arise? The membrane of a cell is an astounding piece of architecture. And the systems that read our DNA genetic code (at 50 operations a second!) to translate that code into the proteins of life boggle the mind.
Yet DNA and those systems arose in the geological blink of an eye. How? What was the source of this information?
There is no clear scientific answer to these questions. Yet all scientists (or essentially all scientists) agree on the data I have just presented. Take five hours and go to a public library. Take a book on human physiology from the shelf. Don't try to study how the body works; that is a lifetime endeavor. Just spend five hours reading about the wonder in the functioning of a single nerve cell. You can weep in joy over the beauty and marvel of the life that is within each of us. And all this wonder occurred in a flash on earth.
We take as givens the forces of gravity, the laws of nature, the ideas that an electron has a negative charge and the protons a positive charge. But these fixed realities do not explain their origins or the order we find in the biological world.
We do not know how energy changes into matter. It took an Einstein to prove that it does, via his equation E=mc2. But the cause that changes matter into energy remains a mystery of nature. As does the cause of gravity. We say there must be gravity waves. We look for virtual photons, those never-seen particles of force and energy, for an explanation.
Eventually a clarification may be found, but even with our eventual understanding of the science behind life, the wonder of life's existence will remain, as will the wonder of existence itself. Why is there a universe, why is there anything rather than nothing?
IN THE BEGINNING
There is an answer in the Torah for all the wonder, for the source of the order that makes up our world. And that answer lies in the very first word of the Bible, Genesis 1:1:
Bereishit bara Elokim et ha'shamayim v'et ha'aretz.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
But there's a problem -- a puzzle in the very first sentence of the Bible! In its literal translation, Bereishit means "in the beginning of." But the Bible has not supplied an object for the preposition "of." Either the reader must fill in that blank by supplying an object for the preposition, or omit the "of" on the assumption that it isn't very important.
If we take the Bible to be the word of God, dropping words is a rather brazen act. Rashi (ca. 1090), the crucial interpreter of the Hebrew words of the Bible, saw the problem and insisted that we seek the deeper meaning. If the verse were "In the beginning," Rashi points out, the Hebrew would have been Be'reshona and not Bereishit.
The solution to this conundrum is found in a 2100-year-old Jerusalem translation of the Hebrew into its sister language, Aramaic. The kabbalist, Nachmanides (ca. 1250), leads into it as follows:
In the beginning from total and absolute nothing, the Creator brought forth a substance so thin it had no corporeality. But this substanceless substance could take on form. This was the only physical creation. Now this creation was a very small point, and from this all things that ever were or will be formed...
If you will merit and understand the secret of the first word, Bereishit, you will know why the Jerusalem translation [of Genesis 1:1] is 'With wisdom God created the heavens and the earth...' But our knowledge of it is less than a drop in the vast ocean.
The Jerusalem translation is not a discovery by itself. It is based on the information brought by Proverbs a thousand years earlier: "I am wisdom... The Lord acquired me [wisdom] as the beginning of His way, the first [reishit] of His works of old" (Proverbs 8:12, 22). Notice the same word, reishit, appears both in Proverbs and in Genesis 1:1.
Wisdom is the substrate, the basis of existence. The biblical claim is that all existence rests on something as intangible as the word of the Divine. As it says: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made" (Psalms 33: 6).
Substitute the word "information" for "wisdom" and we are into the labs of physics at MIT, Princeton, Stanford, University of Vienna. This is physics, not philosophy, the quantum physics of the 21st century. And it has been the opening word of the Torah for over three millennia.
As the equation of words states:
Suddenly, the source of the complex order that guides every form of life, from bacterium to human, is clear. It is the wisdom of the Divine that forms the foundation of all existence. Our universe, and we ourselves, are built by the word of God. As the Talmud declares: "God looked into the Torah and created the world."
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I have contended (and often), as have many other qualified individuals, that this question is never really addressed by Penrose. He prattles on at length, but he does not adequately justify his assertion, at least not to the satisfaction of many of the people familiar with the fields of mathematics he discusses on this subject.
The thing is... Well, nevermind. It would probaly only get me in trouble.
Well, yes, it is true that I presume the objective. But for most simple models, that can be inferred to exist from the subjective. Which is good enough for me; no point in complicating things needlessly.
If one does not presume that the universe is some manner of finite state machine (no matter how bizarre) then my reasoning does not hold. Given that there is not insignificant evidence that the universe functions in an effectively finite state fashion (c.f. thermodynamics), I see no reason to presume otherwise at this point in time.
The Zombie-Mary argument is very flawed, though subtly.
System equivalence is independent of the nature of the implementation. Fundamental differences in construction and internal behavior can only impact time complexity and have no impact on theoretical equivalence. Just because some internal components are not equivalent do not make the systems that contain them non-equivalent. There are an infinite number of ways to implement equivalent systems.
For example, take two different machines that add two numbers between 0 and 99. One machine uses a standard adding algorithm, while the other machine uses a giant lookup table containing all possible values. Are these machines equivalent? Absolutely. Are they identical in the way two numbers are "added"? Not even close. But it doesn't matter, because equivalence is determined by inputs and their corresponding outputs. Two numbers go into a machine, a correct sum comes out.
Because every pattern has an infinite number of implementation possibilities, the details of the implementation are irrelevant. You can't determine how something is implemented from looking at the inputs and outputs alone (e.g. you can never prove or detect that a person is a zombie -- you may be, I may be, or both, or neither). From the standpoint of information theory, these two machines are identical in every way. In fact, viewing these two machines as different is a naive Shannon perspective, as it completely ignores high order patterns, and making these equivalent was a/the major contribution of Kolmogorov to the field.
So I'll put the ball back in your court. They are not Shannon equivalent (what the Zombie-Mary argument relies on), but they are Kolmogorov equivalent. And remember, the primary flaw in Shannon that Kolmogorov fixed was that Shannon information often asserted non-equivalence for many kinds of high-order patterns that casual inspection showed to be equivalent in fact. This example is precisely the kind of theoretical domain that breaks the pure Shannon assumption.
The fact is - we live in a universe that appears to be fine-tuned for life and science is 'consciously' aware of this fact.
As I stated before, it is as of recent that science has thrown away design and now assumes only natural agencies for everything leading to our very conscious. You have accused me of ‘skipping a few steps’. I am assuming science did not skip any steps and asking “for the evidence” that life and the universe is the result of unintelligent, purposeless forces.
If science rejects design than I do not see how I am asking you to prove a negative. I am merely asking for the evidence that science is currently searching for with its’ a priori belief…
Beyond this, if intelligence denotes teleology and ‘current’ science must reject teleology than science rejects the two things ‘it’ requires. Why use intelligence and purpose to reject intelligence and purpose? Have we thunk ourselves stupid?
Now, we can discuss quantum mechanics and how we may never know how it all operates, but ‘current’ science still cannot let intelligence or purpose enter the scene.
So here we are, life the universe and everything – science, our conscious, emotions, etc... It all appears to be designed. Fine-tuned? Unintelligent? Purposeless? Illusion?
As a ‘skeptic’ I am asking “for the evidence” that I am the result of a mindless happenstance from the beginning.
We'll never resolve this, and I suspect that the cosmologists won't either. First you say it all appears to be designed. And I suppose it does -- to you. But not to everyone. Which is the core of the problem. Others will -- with equally pure hearts -- say that it doesn't appear designed, and then they will ask for evidence that it was designed.
In such cases, we're probably not asking the right questions. It seems to me that it's perfectly acceptable to pick the answer that pleases you. There's not much else to go on at this stage, so it's as good a method as any.
Beyond this you say to pick one way or another because we will probably never know? It seems ‘current’ science has picked… but you say it doesn’t matter either way?
We are talking about our existence and where we came from…
This is not important anymore?
They all say that the universe is suitable for life, which seems undeniable. Not all say it's designed. For names, see my next paragraph.
Beyond this you say to pick one way or another because we will probably never know? It seems ‘current’ science has picked… but you say it doesn’t matter either way?
Science hasn't picked anything. It's a topic of debate. Check out the article in th is thread. You asked for names. They're in the article.
We are talking about our existence and where we came from… This is not important anymore?
It's important. Today it seems scientifically unanswerable. I'd like to know, but there's not enough information. So you may as well pick the answer that makes you happy.
Aaah please, who cares what his motives are? Everyone has motives. The point is that Penrose has written at detailed length of his views and why he thinks they are correct. If you or others cannot refute them with facts, then his view has to be listened to regardless of whatever his motives are.
Motives are the classical Communist form of argument when the facts cannot be contradicted. It is a variation of the Clintonian politics of personal destruction, it is known throughout history as attacking the messenger and it is a totally false and a pretty despicable way of discussing the validity of ideas.
There is no doubt that there is more than one way to skin a cat. However, I have never heard of anyone who wanted to learn how to skin a cat opening up a mathematics book to find out how to do it.
Which is irrelevant. Those who say it was designed point to numerous facts and scientific laws which show that the whole thing could not have occurred at random. As a proponent of materialism you have to show that those incredible coincidences could have occurred at random. You cannot so you play the how many people say this or that game. The only thing valid in science is facts, opinions are worthless.
Yet science rejects design with emotional passion?
And again you say it doesn’t matter and we should just pick…
‘Current’ science only adheres to unintelligent, purposeless forces. Your article only shows from some the rejection of evidence regardless of evidence. (though I did not see where anyone rejected that the universe appears to be designed)
If science is going to be based on:
1. unintelligent, purposeless forces.
2. Impartial investigation.
What does science ‘assume’ when the two go opposite ways?
BTW- Thanks for the article…
I don't. When you look up at the sky, do you see any patterns? Any letters spelled out?
When you look at the human genome, in detail, see any evidence of design? Any efficent placement of the genes? Any evidence of an attempt to get rid of the junk? What about the fraying ends of the chromosomes? The transposons that just get up and move themselves randomly to another location? The broken genes?
When you look at the avifauna of Hawaii, why does it look like it as all descended from a small number of accidental arrivals? Why were there no land mammals before humans arrived? If you were designing an island paradise, wouldn't you give it a rich fauna? All the really isolated islands are like that. Funny, huh?
I have to say, Gore3000, that you are a true exemplar of your faith. When I hear the phrase 'Christian Virtue' I think of you. Keep up the good work!
Yup, you see a marvel of design which none of us could come even close to accomplishing it. We see some 100 trillion cells working together to make us what we are. Now if that is not a marvel of design, let's see you or anyone else do better.
Have you actually read any of Penroses' books, Gore3000?
I don't have a list of names. Even if I did, it wouldn't be persuasive to either of us. Maybe Physicist can give you some names.
And again you say it doesn’t matter and we should just pick…
No. I haven't said it doesn't matter. The last time you claimed that was my position, I attempted to clarify things. In post 328 I said: " It's important. Today it seems scientifically unanswerable. I'd like to know, but there's not enough information. So you may as well pick the answer that makes you happy."
If science is going to be based on: 1. unintelligent, purposeless forces.
Those adjectives are your own. Science is based on verifiable data. Surely you know this. When the data runs out, speculation begins. But that's not solid science.
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