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.
No. It is not. If you read my post again,(here it is)
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To: trashcanbred; Batrachian
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".
Yeah, right. The crier says, "God save the United States and this honorable court." |
you may notice no mention of Bible reading. Rather you will find a comment demonstrating your misguided reading of the Constitution. There is no separation of church and state mentioned anywhere in that document. It does mention that no law respecting an establishment of religion can be passed by Congress. That is what this argument is about. And at the moment you are on the side of Kennedy, Schumer and their ilk who think that judges can read whatever they want into the Constitution. They are going to make a great attempt to defeat Alito because of his viewpoint that you don't read things into the Constitution that are not there.
And no, I did not try to bolster my argument by quoting a law. I provided a background for the images I posted. Do you see a quote of a law here or a quote of the webpage pointed to by the link above my quote...(repeated here)
| 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. |
This quote was to give background to the NEP and the next paragraph, from a different source, gave how it was used and who used it. Now that is three sources, one more pointing to the page having links for the images, for the NEP to show that separation of church and state was not in the Constitution up to the 20th century. You will note that the 14th amendment was ratifed in 1868. This supposed law of the land(separation of church and state) was not discovered until 1947 tracing its validity to an amendment ratified 79 years prior. Lots of dumb justices were in office during that period. We have a similar situation now. Congress is ready to pass a law because the Supreme Court again imagined a power not in the Constitution, the ability for a government to take the property of an individual and cede it to another individual.
Now as to your red herring. I will not answer it, until you concede that the words "separation of church and state" are nowhere to be found in the United States Constitution.
Sure... I will concede if it will get you to answer my question about why you want to teach my children the bible in school when I don't want you to. In the end that is really all I want to know.
I will take that as answering that the Constitution does not say anything about "separation of church and state"
I never said anything about teaching your kids the Bible even if it was with your consent. I do not think your children should be taught counter to your feelings. However, I do believe it is appropriate to study the Bible in school. That does not mean an attempt should be made to convert your children. In cases where the school district has chosen to teach about the Bible, or Koran, or Sacred Hindu texts, or Navajo beliefs etc, a suitable alternate topic should be available for those children whose parents do not agree with the religious subjects being covered. The appropriate place for full Bible study is Sunday School whether that is Baptist, Methodist, LDS, or etc.
Well... I agreed it does not explicitly but it does implicitly. The equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th amendment applies the establishment clause to the states in addition to congress. Look you can argue with me about this all you want, but this is what every court in the US goes by. Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas seemed to have no trouble applying due process and equal protection clauses to justify the remedy in Bush v. Gore in 2000. I did not hear a peep out of Rush or Hannity on State's rights then, did you?
It is the same thing with the term "proof beyond a reasonable doubt". Does it exist anywhere in the US Constitution? Nope... but the Supreme Court explicitly held that it does via the due process clause.
Look many cases are decided in the US by interpretation of the law, especially when it is a constitutional case. That is how it has worked here and Great Britain for a very long time.
Anyway thanks for not wanting to convert my children. If I seemed angry, then you were correct.
Well, I answered you truthfully. You are now showing your deceit. End of exchange.
P.S. beyond a reasonable doubt is common law. And, no, not every judge agrees with what you stated about reading things into the constitution. That is why we have controversy at every conservative judicial nomination. There is no controversy over whether women have a right to vote. That is indisputably in the Constitution.
Quite a post RA. I had to let this incubate in my head for a day before it started to make sense. I read back when the tsunami hit Indonesia? it actually caused a small wobble in the earth's axis. I think of it as those balloon balls they used to make that had a weight inside them that when thrown they wobbled so much it was much harder to catch. In viewing this with the tides it makes sense that the moon and Earth would change their relationship with each other.
The last part of your more than I bargained for post I have taken in as head knowledge without much understanding. Seems as nature abhors a vaccuum (so much for outer space) it also abhors being out of balance. Thanks for the post.
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