ID [Intelligent Design] Opens Astronomer’s Mind to Universe’s Surprises

Discovery Institute ^ | November 10, 2005 | Julia C. Keller

[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.

[Senator Bedfellow]

Pluto is also phase-locked with its moon, Charon.

[Senator Bedfellow]

Sorry, hit "post" too soon ;)

Anyway, Pluto is phase-locked with its moon, Charon. Pluto's own rotation is also phase-locked to its moon, meaning that not only does one side of Charon always face Pluto, but Pluto's rotation matches the orbital period of Charon, so that one side of Pluto is always facing Charon. Eventually, the earth's rotation will match the orbital period of our moon too, so that the same side of earth will always face the moon, and the other half of the planet will just be out of luck. ;)

[jwh_Denver]

Thanks for the belief change. Quite interesting.

[Senator Bedfellow]

Not a problem. ;)

[AndrewC]

That is a tradition and I have nothing against it.

Hilarious! Where is the wall? It is a tradition until it is stopped.

[S0122017]

Atheists claim that religious people need to believe in something higher to make their existence sensible.

I like to point out, that atheists need to believe there is nothing higher than themselves for the exacts same reason.

[trashcanbred]

But it is and I have nothing against it because it imposes nothing on me and my family.

My discussion was about teaching the bible in public school in a way that is non-historical. I don't have a problem if it is discussed in an academic manner but if it is pushed on to my children as the absolue truth then I have a problem.

Perhaps everyone here is significantly older than I am but I did not grow up with it being taught in my school. My school also did not have prayer nor did it impose one religion over another on me. To me... that is what I expect my chidrens' school to do.

[S0122017]

Imagine an atheist, forced to make a decision between living in a universe where there is a God, or one in which he is the center of the universe?

Most atheists, they would rather not live at all if given the former as only alternative. They are rather subjective, and that is not what a scientist should be.

Not that objectivity means much in this case, since when dealing with existence/creation, who could possibly be 'objective'?

[zeeba neighba]

That is the nub of the little debate. Man as God. It's what he wants, old as Lucifer.

[GreenOgre]

My post has nothing to do about beliefs. It has to do with a statement that is inherently false and frequently used by creationists and ID believers alike. Darwin was a Christian. The Origin of the Species has nothing to do with "God Killing", nor does any scientific theory that I know of. Faith and science are two different animals. I can be a Christian and believe evolution explains how life on earth got to be the way it is.

My favorite argument against ID and Creationists is, "Where are the lions and tigers and bear fossils that should, by ID/Creationist theory, coexist with dinosaurs?"

There aren't any, because that's the way the world works. Without daily divine intervention.

[S0122017]

In holland they already have liberal schools for a long while.

Religion is not being taught forcibly, my school had something called (crudely translated) "society teachings".

It teaches the basic views of a number of religions and some differences and similarities between them. Not enough about the more 'exotic religions' i am afraid, it was mostly a christian divergence class, but the class probably improved.

Later you where allowed to decide whether you wanted to keep the class or not.

I like that system.
In any case, there where enough schools that where "catholic" or "christian" and that still have prayers.

Also there are a lot of schools in holland conveniently located nearby, so everyone can go to a school that they like.

Isnt that the only way? Allowing people to decide for themselves?

[S0122017]

Yeah ok, i misinterpreted you. In any case i do know evolution occured, and am religious aswel.

MY reasoning is, if God did everything without using intermediate systems, than we wouldnt need DNA either. He simply would keep us alive.

I believe in a Universe where everything is a part of God,
so the discussion about "whether God or evolution" created Man is a redundant issue for me. Everything happens to God's plan.

A blacksmith would use a hammer to create. Did the hammer or the blacksmith create? That is my view on God and evolution.

[AndrewC]

My discussion was about teaching the bible in public school in a way that is non-historical.

Here is a bit of history.(and tradition for a while)

Pages of the New England Primer

http://www.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/neprimer.html
In the 1700's schools in the colonies were strongly influenced by religion. It was the intent of the colonists that all children should learn to read and in 1642 Puritan Massachusetts passed a law stating this. They believed that an inability to read was Satan's attempt to keep people from the Scriptures.

New England Primer

The New England Primer was the first textbook ever printed in America and was used to teach reading and Bible lessons in our schools until the twentieth century. In fact, many of the Founding Fathers and their children learned to read from The New England Primer. This pocket-size edition is an historical reprint of the 1777 version used in many schools during the Founding Era. A great resource for homeschoolers or for use in any classroom.

[BlazingArizona]

. However, the moon's rotation is such that we on Earth only see exactly 1 face of it has to be math wise an astronomical figure of that occuring anywhere.

This is not a coincidence, but happens for a specific reason: if the orbiting body is within a certain distance of its primary ("the thing it orbits"), the primary grabs bulges on the body and , over time, yanks its period of rotation into phase with the orbital period. Such a body is said to be "tide-locked".

Another example of this relationship is Mercury and the Sun.

[trashcanbred]

Isnt that the only way? Allowing people to decide for themselves?

Hey I like that idea.

Also there are a lot of schools in holland conveniently located nearby, so everyone can go to a school that they like.

The Netherlands has a population density of 482 per square kilometer(just looking at the land area). The US has only approximately 30 per square kilometer. So given that we have a significantly lower denisity population and we are significantly larger in land mass, having a lot of schools in nearby locations might be harder for us to implement.

The Netherlands is a nice place to work though. The people sure are nice to work with.

[trashcanbred]

It was the intent of the colonists that all children should learn to read and in 1642 Puritan Massachusetts passed a law stating this. They believed that an inability to read was Satan's attempt to keep people from the Scriptures.

It is interesting you chose Massachusetts Puritans from the 1600's as your example of tradition. Was that an accident or do you really identify with Puritans of that time period?

I bring it up not just because of the famous things they did, like the witch trials in Salem, but because of all the other things they did. Massachusettes was literally a police state and any deviation from the Puritan religion was dealt with very severely. They were the very definition of religious intolerance. In 1658, a law to put Quakers to death just for being there in Massachusettes was a particularly harsh law. Of course, many Quakers felt it was unjust and people like Mary Dyer decided to put it to the test. Poor Mary, I am glad that we still don't keep that tradition around.

There are so many other things that happend in the 1600's under the Puritans that I recommend the reader go look it all up themselves. Extreme religious intolerance are not traditions I think the rest of the US wants to bring back.

I am sorry your example did nothing but make me more convinced that I am on the right side of this.

[Virginia-American]

I knew a man in Mass. who tried to get his ex-wife arrested on a capital (!) charge of visiting Rhode Island on the Sabbath.

[AndrewC]

It is interesting you chose Massachusetts Puritans from the 1600's as your example of tradition. Was that an accident or do you really identify with Puritans of that time period?

Really! You tend to miss the point. Where is this wall you mentioned. As the examples illustrate, the religious content was blatant and somehow walked right through that wall you mentioned. This particular book shows that the wall was rather porous up until the twentieth century. And your denigration of Massachusetts would apply to the whole United States. Your view of history makes it seem impossible for the United States to have even come into being. I laugh in your general direction.

[AndrewC]

There are so many other things that happend in the 1600's under the Puritans that I recommend the reader go look it all up themselves.

P.S. I take it you are on the side of illiteracy, due to the Puritan law.

[trashcanbred]

Where is this wall you mentioned.

Wall? Did I ever mention a "wall" in my posts? Is this metaphorical? Sorry maybe I am dense but I don't recall mentioning a wall anywhere. Um... can you elaborate on what you mean?