Posted on 01/29/2006 8:13:04 AM PST by STD
Design and the Anthropic Principle Dr. Hugh Ross, Ph.D.
Hugh Ross launched his career at age seven when he went to the library to find out why stars are hot. Physics and astronomy captured his curiosity and never let go. At age seventeen he was the youngest person ever to serve as director of observations for Vancouver's Royal Astronomical Society. With the help of a provincial scholarship and a National Research Council (NRC) of Canada fellowship, he completed his undergraduate degree in physics (University of British Columbia) and graduate degrees in astronomy (University of Toronto). The NRC also sent him to the United States for postdoctoral studies. At Caltech he researched quasi-stellar objects, or "quasars," some of the most distant and ancient objects in the universe.
Not all of Hugh's discoveries had to do with astrophysics. He observed with amazement the impact of describing for people the process by which he came to personal faith in Jesus Christ. Some have expressed dismay but most have been overjoyed to meet someone who started at religious ground zero and through scientific and historical reality testing, became convinced that the Bible is truly the Word of God. He was stunned to discover how many individuals believed or disbelieved without checking evidence.
The next significant time I heard it was from someone who was studying talmud in Lakewood NJ -- and his context was "Yes our actions do change the world, and perhaps not just in the future." At the time we were discussing exactly what consciousness was, and I was asserting that it boiled down to one simple thing: whether we, in the act of observation place a valence of good or bad upon that current moment of observation. That we don't even own in full our own thoughts, much less our bodies, much less even our property. Just the current moment, the taking of it for good or bad. So that was then.
And now, in this post is (iirc) mentioned Princeton's super-theorist physicist John Wheeler's theory that the universe forward and backward in time is brought into beingness (or perhaps refined in beingness) by dint of our observations. With each observation, with each thing we each notice, the world is created backwards in time and forwards as well.
Twilight Zone stuff.
In some Jewish teaching, there are similar constructs -- a primordial Adam, who prior to becoming human in body, is a man in the ability to observe, to appreciate and make descisions, and who by that ability brings on the rest of the creation. That each human generation after Adam has a share of the Adam-soul, is rooted in that soul.
Now G-d created Adam, and the rest of all there is too, and the account in Genesis is a fidelic representation thereof. Fidelic, that is, if we were able to understand it as deeply as it is invested with meaning. Being very limited in intellect, we are not so able to do so.
All that is to say we are partners in this creation, by our observations for the good and acts based on those observations, we are to finish it. To bring it to a perfection, perhaps. To finsh the work of the Divine Week.
"When correctly viewed,
everything is lewd."
“Dream Interpretation”
Everything’s either
concave or -vex,
so whatever you dream
will be something with sex.
— Piet Hein
YEC INTREP - compromiser alert
I apologize to both of you! I've read your wonderful posts but haven't finished meditating on all the points you raised - and now it's late and I'm exhausted. I'll try to put my thoughts together in the morning!
It seem more likely that every possible kind of universe exists simultaneously, for whatever that's worth.
"Yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live." -I Corinthians 8:6
Since the Creator eventually took upon Himself the form of a human in order to redeem the whole creation, it would seem reasonable that the anthropic principle would apply to creation in general. I've heard it said that, strictly in terms of physical size, the human form is midway between the smallest particle known and the largest expanse known. The imagination can always envision something smaller, or something larger ad infinitum.
"And if anyone thinks he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know."
Oh, well. More's the pity.
2. No, you're mistaken: it doesn't contradict logic in any way. Or if it does, you've not demonstrated it.
That Man was created first and the Universe created around him means that the complex was created to serve the simple. In physics, systems tend to simplify, not complicate. They degenerate into disorder; they do not order themselves. Your system would have to adapt all emergent features to conform to the existing one: the simplest one. That would require that each of those emergent features become more and more complex, as each would have to accommodate not only Man, but all the preceding features. In other words, you've built a logical pyramid that stands on its apex, not its base. It is the very antithesis of logic.
Copernicus was asked to demonstrate how the planets revolved around the earth. He managed to do so, but only by contorting logic until it broke. He then took the simpler route, that the planets orbited the sun, not the earth. Although deemed heretical, the simpler theory proved true.
3. No, you're mistaken again: it doesn't contradict creationism. The pattern of the six days of creation (which I take to be six historical, common-sense-of-the-word days, relatively recent) is form and fullness. Day one, light; day four, light-bearers; day two, sky and water; day five, birds and marine life; day three, dry land; day six, animals and man to live on the dry land.
So God was preparing the world for man, the crowning act of creation.
But Man was NOT created first, then the universe wrapped around him. In fact, from the Genesis account, it would almost seem that Man is an afterthought, someone God thought useful to share His Creation and to glorify Him.
The gist of this article is that Man caused the universe to be created, and that all the order in the universe conforms to Man's needs. Aside from the fact that that is patently untrue -- most of the universe is overwhelmingly hostile to Man -- it also requires that Man existed somehow before there was anywhere (or anyWHEN for that matter) for him TO exist.
My response below corresponds to 2ndreconmarine’s comments:
1. I agree that the article was much better in the beginning than in the end. But it doesn’t surprise me that he accepts the universe as old – that is the majority view. Those who believe the universe is young fall into two camps: (a) the Young Earth Creationism theory which asserts the physical realm was created some 6,000 years ago and the physical evidence must support that, and (b) the Gosse Omphalos hypothesis which asserts that God created an old-looking universe some 6,000 years ago.
My personal view is akin to Gerald Schroeder’s (a Jewish physicist): that we must consider both inflationary theory and relativity to understand the age of this universe. Six days from the inception space/time coordinates are equal to some 15 billion years from our space/time coordinates.
2. I disagree with your definition of “Intelligent Design” though I agree we must realize the difference between the “Design of the Universe” and “Intelligent Design”. You said:
Only a “doubting Thomas” demands physical proof. But doubting Thomas was an apostle, too.
Moreover, the Father has revealed Himself in several ways: through Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, through Scriptures and through Creation (both spiritual and physical). And we will be held accountable if we fail to notice His revelations.
Romans 1 and Psalms 19 make it clear that we should notice His revelation in nature. And in that regard, I stand in awe over (a) the fact of a beginning of space/time and physical causality, (b) the unreasonable effectiveness of math, (c) the presence of information (successful communication) in the universe and in life, (d) autonomy in life, (e) willfulness, especially the will to live.
I've seen some of these same arguments made before when I read Roger Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind", which was more concerned with the subject of conciousness but touched on almost every aspect of modern physics and cosmology. It is because of that, among other things, that I call myself an agnostic rather than an atheist. The universe we live in IS very special, at least for our form of life, and that raises questions. And it's not just that small changes in the initial conditions would have rendered the universe a little different and unsuitable for our form of life, but that it would be completely different in structure. This of course leads to philosophical discussions of the anthropic principle and the "many worlds" or multiple-universe question. But the problem is that we have no knowledge, not even theoretical, of anything "outside" this universe, or whether such a concept even has any meaning.
OTOH, the arguments for the specialness of earth are weaker, IMO. For one, our knowledge of how common, or not, solar systems like ours are in the universe, is very sketchy. Also the anthropic principle appears to me to apply even more strongly here - of course Earth has the conditions necessary for life to arise, or else we wouldn't be here to ask the question.
I really don't understand the disconnect. God, who knows the end from the beginning, creates the world for man. So it bears the marks of His design.
Dan
Precisely. My God doesn't need the endorsement of a lot of puny humans, all validating His existence using the very tools He gave them to begin with. A microbe may not understand calculus, but that's not because of any shortcoming on the part of the calculus.
Hello 2ndreconmarine! WRT the above: This is the seemingly intractable problem regarding Intelligent Design — there seem to be as many definitions of it as there are commentators on it. The definition you give here is not at all what I think of as ID. All the intelligent design hypothesis states is that “certain features of the universe and life are best explained by intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.” Certain features, not all features. On my understanding, ID does not at all deny Darwinian evolution. It simply maintains that living organisms cannot be fully accounted for on the basis of random mutation + natural selection alone.
As Alamo-Girl tirelessly points out, what is most needful is to discriminate the important differences between ID and the ID movement. The latter is not science. The former is, if we are to listen to scientists such as John Wheeler, Fred Hoyle, et al. To me it doesn't matter a whit that these gentlemen did not self-describe as IDers. (Hoyle was an atheist.) You just have to take a look at their work and what they had to say about it to draw that conclusion.
I find it fascinating that the description you give of ID above is actually the view of Sir Isaac Newton. It was Newton himself who “thought to catch this tendency of the mechanical explanation [of nature as] leading to a world independent from God.” [see: Wolfhart Pannenberg, Towards a Theology of Nature, 1993]. As a practical matter, Newton was concerned that all that random bumping around of material objects would inevitably become a source of disorder in the world; and that God would have to step in from time to time to set matters aright again.
BTW, FWIW, this is not my belief. Though I share with Newton the idea that God is active in the world because the essential nature of God is, as Newton put it, “the Lord of Life with His creatures,” I strongly doubt he has to intervene and tinker with the physical creation, nor does every new species require a “special creation” by God. Evolution may very well be the tool God chose to realize His grand design in time.
My own thought in the matter — which is purely speculative of course — is that the world takes its foundation in an algorithm from inception, which defines all possible infinite possibility spaces for anything that can come into existence in this universe. It is a kind of blueprint that specifies the kinds of outcomes that can be realized, in advance; but it does not need to precisely define each and every unique, particular entity that comes into existence. The “design” is so unimaginably perfect that it runs as if on automatic pilot, so to speak. This is a model of that which is unchangeable (Logos and laws which flow from it) and that which is susceptible to change, to development.
Of course, readers in philosophy will instantly catch me out here as a Neoplatonist. :^)
As a Christian, I identify this algorithm from inception as the Word, the Logos of God. A scientist might associate it with the singularity of the big bang. God spoke the Word, and then just let’ er rip. An expanding universe suitable for the evolution of life is the result.
It’s important to mention here that I fully recognize my “speculation” on this topic is not strictly-speaking “scientific.” Rather, it is cosmological. I’d just like to point out that many scientists today, especially in physics, astrophysics, and information science, have been drawn to the cosmological implications of their work. Evolutionary biology, on the other hand, seems to be working overtime to constrain their field of endeavor to the narrowest possible.
Lastly, I think the real bone that Neodarwinism wants to pick with ID is ID’s skepticism about methodological naturalism. In particular, MN does not appear to be eminently suitable to exploring such things as consciousness, intelligence, and successful communication in nature. It is, as I’ve suggested elsewhere, limited to only two of Aristotle’s four causes, the material and the efficient. And yet, the more we study the universe and the things in it, the more we realize that questions of formal and final cause are essential to understanding the “all that there is” in this universe.
Well, that is my present understanding at any rate, subject to change as “new data come in.” :^)
Incidentally, that Ellis article I provided the URL for well develops the idea of final causes in nature, called “goals” in the article. Spunkets and I were having a conversation about that, a couple of weeks ago. We didn’t get very far, unfortunately.
I very much enjoyed the article at the top of this thread, and thank you for pinging me to it. I agree with you that it’s unproductive for one to base religious belief on scientific theories. If you have faith, you don’t need the theories. As to whether there is intelligent life anywhere else in the universe, all I can say is: I don’t know, and presently have no way of finding out. Seems like a very good reason to remain silent on the subject.
Again, thanks, 2ndreconmarine, for pinging me to this fascinating article, and for your excellent essay/post! Sorry to be so tardy with my reply.
Careful, BB, you may be evolving into a deist. My cyber-passion for you never ebbs.
LoL.. true.. If Mankind are frogs in separate different wells with merely human language to communicate with.. about the sky they can see or surmise.. the well.. and what they even each are.. individually and corporately.. The Semantics of the discourse(croaking) are no doubt the source the froggie clubs of thought.. on many issues they can't possible have a clue of.. Very easy to get confused as a frog in a well..
But arrogance would be easy.. to make it all simpler, blind to the fact that simplisitic and simple are two different things..
I liken our relationship to the Almighty to that of a microbe and a mathematician. Not only doesn't the microbe understand the math, it doesn't even have the capacity to realize how little it understands or the language to express its helplessness. In its ignorance, it defines everything in terms of itself, never realizing that there is a vastly larger, more complex world beyond. Even if it somehow rose to that capacity, it would still be unable to fathom its own insignificance.
We are eons from even the beginnings of an iota of a shadow of an inkling. And yet we would presume to judge the Creator of All Things. One of the sure signs of our ignorance is our arrogance. The truly wise are infinitely humble, because they understand more than most that they have reason to be.
All these things are observed to be in critical balance for two reasons:
If they were imbalanced they wouldn't be here.
If they weren't here there would be no observer to see them.
My unicorns feel the same way, but my Flying Spaghetti Monster disagrees with them.
Hardly, dear Patrick! For I believe that Isaac Newton's idea of God as "The Lord of Life with his creatures" is true. The algorithm from inception is "just" the "specs" for the Universe. It gets mediated into the Universe through the second part of Newton's observation, which has to do with what he terms Absolute Space -- which is empty space and therefore the field into which things coming into existence can be accommodated. His term for Absolute Space is sensorium Dei -- it can be thought of as a sort of interfacing field between spirit and matter, and therefore of a direct participation of God with His creation. And God being infinite, Absolute Space can start out at Planck length or less (as with the singularity), and expand virtually without limit -- it is "bounded," but potentially infinite from a beginning.
Thus the universe has its beginning in the timeless Logos, and its potential for expansion and development in time as mediated by a field-like construct.
Pretty striking ideas, especially coming from one of the greatest scientists who ever lived -- and all because Newton did worry about a purely mechanical structure for the Universe being understood as placing God entirely outside, rendering Him "unnecessary." Clearly, Newton thought God definitely is necessary.
I think it is a great mistake to understand what Newton was saying here as Leibniz did -- that the sensorium Dei is tantamount to declaring a pantheist God. Not at all! God is not "in" His creation -- but His Logos, and the means for its propagation in creation (i.e., the sensorium Dei) are: On my interpretation, the latter is the creative field in which the Logos ever works.
In short, I'm no more a deist than I am a pantheist. :^)
Thanks ever so much for writing, PH! It's always a pleasure to hear from you.
Good work and metaphorical images.. Through metaphor you say things that takes hundreds of words directly.. As Jesus by the way proved and practiced..
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