God, Man and Physics

The God Hypothesis:
Discovering Design in our "Just Right" Goldilocks Universe
by Michael A. Corey
(Rowman & Littlefield, 256 pp., $27)

GOD'S EXISTENCE is not required by the premises of quantum mechanics or general relativity, the great theories of twentieth-century physics --but then again, it is not contravened by their conclusions either. What else can we do but watch and wait?

The agnostic straddle. It is hardly a posture calculated to set the blood racing. In the early 1970s Jacques Monod and Steven Weinberg thus declared themselves in favor of atheism, each man eager to communicate his discovery that the universe is without plan or purpose. Any number of philosophers have embraced their platform, often clambering onto it by brute force. Were God to exist, Thomas Nagel remarked, he would not only be surprised, but disappointed.

A great many ordinary men and women have found both atheism and agnosticism dispiriting--evidence, perhaps, of their remarkable capacity for intellectual ingratitude. The fact remains that the intellectual's pendulum has swung along rather a tight little arc for much of the twentieth century: atheism, the agnostic straddle, atheism, the agnostic straddle.

The revival of natural theology in the past twenty-five years has enabled that pendulum to achieve an unexpected amplitude, its tip moving beyond atheism and the agnostic straddle to something like religious awe, if not religious faith.

It has been largely the consolidation of theoretical cosmology that has powered the upward swing. Edwin Hubble's discovery that the universe seemed to be expanding in every direction electrified the community of cosmologists in the late 1920s, and cosmologists were again electrified when it became clear that these facts followed from Einstein's general theory of relativity. Thereafter, their excitement diminished, if only because the idea that the universe was expanding suggested inexorably that it was expanding from an origin of some sort, a big bang, as the astronomer Fred Hoyle sniffed contemptuously.

In 1963 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson inadvertently noticed the background microwave radiation predicted by Big Bang cosmology; when Robert Dicke confirmed the significance of their observation, competing steady-state theories of creation descended at once into desuetude. And thereafter a speculative story became a credible secular myth.

But if credible, the myth was also incomplete. The universe, cosmologists affirmed, erupted into existence fifteen billion years ago. Details were available, some going back to the first three minutes of creation. Well and good. But the metaphoric assimilation of the Big Bang to the general run of eruptions conveyed an entirely misleading sense of similarity. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius took place in space and time; the Big Bang marks the spot at which time and space taper to a singularity and then vanish altogether.

It follows that the universe came into existence from nothing whatsoever, and for no good reason that anyone could discern, least of all cosmologists. Even the most ardent village atheist became uneasily aware that Big Bang cosmology and the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis shared a family resemblance too obvious profitably to be denied.

Thereafter, natural theology, long thought dead of inanition, began appearing at any number of colloquia in mathematical physics, often welcomed by the same physicists who had recently been heard reading its funeral obsequies aloud. In "The God Hypothesis: Discovering Design in our "Just Right" Goldilocks Universe," Michael A. Corey is concerned to convey their news without worrying overmuch about the details. His message is simple. There is a God, a figure at once omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, and necessary. Science has established his existence.

AT THE very heart of revived natural theology are what the physicist Brandon Carter called "anthropic coincidences." Certain structural features of the universe, Carter argued, seemed finally tuned to permit the emergence of life. This is a declaration, to be sure, that suggests far more than it asserts. Structural features? Finely tuned? Permit? When the metaphors are squeezed dry, what more is at issue beyond the observation that life is a contingent affair? This is not a thesis in dispute.

Still, it often happens that commonplace observations, when sharpened, prompt questions that they had long concealed. The laws of physics draw a connection between the nature of certain material objects and their behavior. Falling from a great height, an astrophysicist no less than an airplane accelerates toward the center of the earth. Newton's law of gravitational attraction provides an account of this tendency in terms of mass and distance (or heft and separation). In order to gain traction on the real world, the law requires a fixed constant, a number that remains unchanged as mass and distance vary. Such is Newton's universal gravitational constant.

There are many comparable constants throughout mathematical physics, and they appear to have no very obvious mathematical properties. They are what they are. But if arbitrary, they are also crucial. Were they to vary from the values that they have, this happy universe--such is the claim--would be too small or too large or too gaseous or otherwise too flaccid to sustain life. And these are circumstances that, if true, plainly require an explanation.

Carter was a capable physicist; instead of being chuckled over and dismissed by a handful of specialists, the paper that he wrote in 1974 was widely read, Fred Hoyle, Freeman Dyson, Martin Rees, Stephen Hawking, Paul Davies, Steven Weinberg, Robert Jastrow, and John Gribbin all contributing to the general chatter. Very few physicists took the inferential trail to its conclusion in faith; what is notable is that any of them took the trail at all.

THE ASTRONOMER Fred Hoyle is a case in point, his atheism in the end corrected by his pleased astonishment at his own existence. Living systems are based on carbon, he observed, and carbon is formed within stars by a process of nucleosynthesis. (The theory of nucleosynthesis is, indeed, partly his creation.) Two helium atoms fuse to form a beryllium intermediate, which then fuses again with another helium atom to form carbon. The process is unstable because beryllium intermediates are short-lived.

In 1953 Edwin Salpeter discovered that the resonance between helium and intermediate beryllium atoms, like the relation between an opera singer and the glass she shatters, is precisely tuned to facilitate beryllium production. Hoyle then discovered a second nuclear resonance, this one acting between beryllium and helium, and finely tuned as well.

Without carbon, no life. And without specific nuclear resonance levels, no carbon. And yet there he was, Hoyle affirmed, carbon based to the core. Nature, he said in a remark widely quoted, seems to be "a put-up job."

INFERENCES now have a tendency to go off like a string of firecrackers, some of them wet. Hoyle had himself discovered the scenario that made carbon synthesis possible. He thus assigned to what he called a "Supercalculating Intellect" powers that resembled his own. Mindful, perhaps, of the ancient wisdom that God alone knows who God is, he did not go further. Corey is, on the other hand, quite certain that Hoyle's Supercalculating Intellect is, in fact, a transcendental deity--the Deity, to afford Him a promotion in punctuation.

And Corey is certain, moreover, that he quite knows His motives. The Deity, in setting nuclear resonance levels, undertook his affairs "in order to create carbon based life forms."

Did He indeed? It is by no means obvious. For all we know, the Deity's concern may have lain with the pleasurable intricacies of nucleosynthesis, the emergence of life proving, like so many other things, an inadvertent consequence of his tinkering. For that matter, what sense does it make to invoke the Deity's long term goals, when it is His existence that is at issue? If nothing else, natural theology would seem to be a trickier business than physicists may have imagined.

AS IT HAPPENS, the gravamen of Corey's argument lies less with what the Deity may have had in mind and more with the obstacles He presumably needed to overcome. "The cumulative effect of this fine tuning," Corey argues, "is that, against all the odds, carbon was able to be manufactured in sufficient quantities inside stellar interiors to make our lives possible." That is the heart of the matter: against all the odds. And the obvious question that follows: Just how do we know this?

Corey does not address the question specifically, but he offers an answer nonetheless. It is, in fact, the answer Hoyle provides as well. They both suppose that something like an imaginary lottery (or roulette wheel) governs the distribution of values to the nuclear resonance levels of beryllium or helium. The wheel is spun. And thereafter the right resonance levels appear. The odds now reflect the pattern familiar in any probabilistic process--one specified outcome weighed against all the rest. If nuclear resonance levels are, in fact, unique, their emergence on the scene would have the satisfying aspect of a miracle.

It is a miracle, of course, whose luster is apt to dim considerably if other nuclear resonance levels might have done the job and thus won the lottery. And this is precisely what we do not know. The nuclear resonance levels specified by Hoyle are sufficient for the production of carbon. The evidence is all around us. It is entirely less clear that they are necessary as well. Corey and Hoyle make the argument that they are necessary because, if changed slightly, nucleosynthesis would stop. "Overall, it is safe to say"--Corey is speaking, Hoyle nodding--"that given the utter precision displayed by these nuclear resonances with respect to the synthesis of carbon, not even one of them could have been slightly different without destroying their precious carbon yield." This is true, but inconclusive. Mountain peaks are isolated but not unique. Corey and Hoyle may well be right in their conclusions. It is their argument that does not inspire confidence.

THE TROUBLE is not merely a matter of the logical niceties. Revived natural theology has staked its claims on probability. There is nothing amiss in this. Like the rest of us, physicists calculate the odds when they cannot calculate anything better. The model to which they appeal may be an imaginary lottery, roulette wheel, or even a flipped coin, but imaginary is the governing word. Whatever the model, it corresponds to no plausible physical mechanism. The situation is very different in molecular biology, which is one reason criticism of neo-Darwinism very often has biting power. When biologists speculate on the origins of life, they have in mind a scenario in which various chemicals slosh around randomly in some clearly defined physical medium. What does the sloshing with respect to nuclear resonance?

Or with respect to anything else? Current dogma suggests that many of the constants of mathematical physics were fixed from the first, and so constitute a part of the initial conditions of the Big Bang. Corey does not demur; it is a conclusion that he endorses. What then is left of the anthropic claim that the fundamental constants have the value that they do despite "all odds"? In the beginning there was no time, no place, no lottery at all.

MATHEMATICAL physics currently trades in four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak forces governing the nucleus and radioactive decay. In general relativity and quantum mechanics, it contains two great but incompatible theories. This is clearly an embarrassment of riches. If possible, unification of these forces and theories is desirable. And not only unification, but unification in the form of a complete and consistent theoretical structure.

Such a theory, thoughtful physicists imagine, might serve to show that the anthropic coincidences are an illusion in that they are not coincidences at all. The point is familiar. Egyptian engineers working under the pharaohs knew that the angles of a triangle sum to more or less one hundred and eighty degrees. The number appears as a free parameter in their theories, something given by experience and experiment. The Greeks, on the other hand, could prove what the Egyptians could only calculate. No one would today think to ask why the interior angles of a Euclidean triangle sum to precisely one hundred and eighty degrees. The question is closed because the answer is necessary.

THE GRAND HOPE of modern mathematical physicists is that something similar will happen in modern mathematical physics. The Standard Model of particle physics contains a great many numerical slots that must be filled in by hand. This is never counted as a satisfaction, but a more powerful physical theory might show how those numerical slots are naturally filled, their particular values determined ultimately by the theory's fundamental principles. If this proves so, the anthropic coincidences will lose their power to vex and confound.

Nonetheless, the creation of a complete and consistent physical theory will not put an end to revived natural theology. Questions once asked about the fundamental constants of mathematical physics are bound to reappear as questions about the nature of its laws. The constants of mathematical physics may make possible the existence of life, but the laws of mathematical physics make possible the existence of matter. They have, those laws, an overwhelmingly specific character. Other laws, under which not much exists, are at least imaginable. What explanation can mathematical physics itself provide for the fact that the laws of nature are arranged as they are and that they have the form that they do? It is hardly an unreasonable question.

Steven Weinberg has suggested that a final theory must be logically isolated in the sense that any perturbation of its essential features would destroy the theory's coherence. Logical isolation is by no means a clear concept, and it is one of the ironies of modern mathematical physics that the logical properties of the great physical theories are no less mysterious than the physical properties of the universe they are meant to explain. Let us leave the details to those who cherish them.

The tactic is clear enough. The laws of a final theory determine its parameters; its logical structure determines its laws. No further transcendental inference is required, if only because that final theory explains itself.

This is very elegant. It is also entirely unpersuasive. A theory that is logically isolated is not necessarily a theory that is logically unique. Other theories may be possible, some governing imaginary worlds in which light alone exists, others worlds in which there is nothing whatsoever. The world in which we find ourselves is one in which galaxies wink and matter fills the cup of creation. What brings about the happy circumstance that the laws making this possible are precisely the laws making it real? The old familiar circle.

ALL THIS leaves us where we so often find ourselves. We are confronted with certain open questions. We do not know the answers, but what is worse, we have no clear idea--no idea whatsoever--of how they might be answered. But perhaps that is where we should be left: in the dark, tortured by confusing hints, intimations of immortality, and a sense that, dear God, we really do not yet understand.

----------------------------
David Berlinski is a senior fellow of Discovery Institute and the author of "A Tour of the Calculus" and "The Advent of the Algorithm." His most recent book is Newton's Gift (Free Press).

Then how can a trans-muted species EVER come into being? If cross fertilization does not produce a fertile offspring to propagate itself then where is mechanism for continued evolution?

I don't get the feeling that you're very familiar with models of speciation. It's about isolated subpopulations going their own way.

Cross-fertility is simply the most common test for whether a new species has arisen. When you've lost it, you have a new species. Hybridization can produce instant speciation in plants, but that's not the mechanism by which, say, humans diverged from apes or amphibians diverged from fish.

Here's a scenario:

The Short Summary

A group of creatures gets isolated from the rest of their species. They can evolve easily, because they are a small group. Later, they spread and replace their parent species. Examples are known.

Speciation by Punctuated Equilibrium.

Yes BUT, if evolution is a constant, though slow process, then there should be SOME modern indication of an intermediate species. Life forms produce mutations all the time but I know of none of those mutations that continue on as a viable species without human intervention. If species to species sexual contact cannot produce a hybrid why does it make sense that natural selection can do so. What you seem to be advocating is the scientific version of the "immaculate conception".

To begin with, there is no rule that commands a species to mutate and produce some new species. There are loads of species that have been around, unchanged, for millions of years. And of course, bacteria are still with us in great abundance. They haven't all developed into multi-cellular creatures. A new species probably won't happen unless a mutant group is separated from the parent stock, or if some disaster kills off the parent stock, etc. In the absence of something like that, all you'd have is a species with a lot of genetic variation in the population. But that variation is the potential for speciation if conditions warrant.

As for some species now going through the process, how in the world would you recognize it if you saw it? Are penguins on the way, millions of years hence, to becoming something else? What's to become of the ostritch? How about those "walking catfish" you sometimes read about? How many species of birds are there? Or beetles? And how many more will there be in 100,000 years? As I said, every species has the potential to produce mutated offspring. Some will eventually produce a new species, some won't. These things take time. From the fossil record, we can see that it's happened. There's no reason to assume that it has stopped. (Except perhaps in our own case, as it's very easy now for virtually every individual to survive and breed.)

As for some species now going through the process, how in the world would you recognize it if you saw it? Are penguins on the way, millions of years hence, to becoming something else? What's to become of the ostritch? How about those "walking catfish" you sometimes read about? How many species of birds are there? Or beetles? And how many more will there be in 100,000 years? As I said, every species has the potential to produce mutated offspring. Some will eventually produce a new species, some won't. These things take time. From the fossil record, we can see that it's happened. There's no reason to assume that it has stopped. (Except perhaps in our own case, as it's very easy now for virtually every individual to survive and breed.)

I am sure that you would disagree but the above paragraph has the same reliance on "faith" and was written with the same religious fervor that a creatiionist exhibits when confronted with a question for which there is NO answer...yet. Fossil records are a very un-focused snapshot of the past in very specific locations and even those that are responsible for interpreting them admit that they come to conclusions based on assumptions that are being revised daily. I am not saying they are wrong, I am saying that those MOST educated in modern evolution do NOT take the absolutist positions of those laymen that have embraced the concept as an alternate religion. I am not arguing the traditional creationist position, I am looking at the gaps in both and see that MANY of those gaps could be the result of blind-spots and personal bias on both sides of the debate.

If cross fertilization does not produce a fertile offspring to propagate itself then where is mechanism for continued evolution?

I can be a little slow. Finally, finally I understand your answer. The mules aren't the new species. As you point out, they aren't fertile with anything. The only reason there are mules around is that people keep interfering with the natural mating preferences of the animals involved.

That horses and donkeys can produce mules shows that they are far more related than, say, horses and caribou. The most common case is that different species, if they can be induced to try to mate (or artificially inseminated) are totally cross-infertile. That the mules are themselves are infertile shows that horses and donkeys are no longer the same species.

That horses and donkeys can produce mules shows that they are far more related than, say, horses and caribou. The most common case is that different species, if they can be induced to try to mate (or artificially inseminated) are totally cross-infertile. That the mules are themselves are infertile shows that horses and donkeys are no longer the same species.

That I agree with and appreciate the time and links you have provided. I see no contradiction between evolution and intelligent design. I think the controversy lies in the definition of "intelligent". Someone made a wise comment earlier that if the existence of "God" is ever proven beyond faith it will be science that proves it. I happen to believe in God and that he has one hell of a sense of humor. Thanks for the discussion.

"Your account COULD be true, but it has hardly been demonstrated. Ultimately, what you are saying is that, given enough time and natural selection, anything is possible. How is that falsifiable? There is no experiment that could DISPROVE what you say, so I would call it a plausibility argument and not yet science." -- Maro

The proof is in the DNA. And the natural selection hypothesis is indeed falsifiable. Thousands of tests have been conducted and there have been no rejections. It is important to understand how hypothesis testing works. You make a prediction, you devise an experiment to test the prediction. All you can do then is either reject or accept the hypothesis. If you accept it you still haven't proven the hypothesis correct, you have only failed to disprove it. Evolution is still standing. Intelligent Design has failed every valid test (i.e., all its testable hypotheses have been rejected). Rejection is tantamount to proof that the hypothesis is false but there can be a statistical risk that you have falsely rejected a true hypothesis. This is not so for Intelligent Design because most of the tests do not depend on statistical analysis of the data for confirmation.

How much detail a person needs to understand that the accumulated differences between species in the functional and junk portions of the genome prove an evolutionary history and a common ancestry but preclude an Intelligent Designer depends on whether or not the person, A) knows anything about evolution and genetics in particular and biology in general, and B) is not already convinced that his Bible has given him all the answers he needs.

A complete comparison of Chimp and Human chromosomes will give you a map of every change that has occurred to both species since we had a common ancestor with the Chimp. The fact that each person's DNA (identical twins excepted) is unique to that person means that change occurs constantly and accumulates. Try explaining this to someone who has never even heard of meiosis. We understand the genetic material and how it is transmitted and we have the fossil record to show that life on this planet has changed continuously since it began so all we are doing now is filling in the details. There is currently no room for the Intelligent Designer unless his purpose was to fool us into thinking that natural selection occurred naturally. But then that leaves all our tools and methods useless to discover the artifice unless he slipped up and left a clue which is exceedingly doubtful given the expertise required to effect such an enormous charade.

It is just a waste of time to go into sufficient detail to explain this to people that think binary machine code (base 2) means that because DNA uses four nucleotide bases it is somehow a base four code. I would say that these folks are not running on all eight cylinders but for the fact that most of them only have one cylinder to begin with.

Well I liked your post until you started sermonizing in that last paragraph. Now I am just a poor old Texas engineer that loves to design things. I dissected frogs in high school and there is a mechanical equivalent for every part of that critter and given the time and inclination, I could produce a reasonable facsimile of a frog that acted "lifelike" but it would not be alive and no matter how many billions of years it sat, it will never be alive. Now, when you as a "high priest" of science can recreate, in your temple, the circumstances that ended in that simple frog then I will say that your arrogance and absolute faith in your personal dogma is justified.

"The progression of skulls from the early homonids to our own wonderful species will astonish you. And it's beyond dispute that we share a tremendous amount of our genetic material with other homonids, more so than with any other species on earth. But even if you don't find such evidence persuasive, it's still the only game in town. There's literally zero evidence for any other origin for man."

Ah, but therein lies the rub. We see progressive new varieties of skulls in the fossil record just as we see progressive new varieties or automobiles buried in junkyards, yet we'd be foolish to say that there is literally zero evidence for the non-natural, unaided, non-intelligent origin of cars!

In other words, just because we see evidence of speciation does NOT mean that we see evidence of how said speciation was formed. Sure, it could have been natural (ala Evolution), but it could also have been un-natural (ala Intelligent Intervention).

It certainly isn't out of the realm of possibility that DNA can be designed and programmed via Intelligent Intervention (think, gene-splicing for an actual scientific example of this very thing already being done by Man), after all!

So let's not try to say that there is only one possible answer, and that answer is Evolution. We have clear evidence of gene-splicing by Man that shows that DNA can be programmed by an Intelligent Intervention, so clearly there are at least two possible explanations for speciation.

Am I clear enough on this point? Contrary to your claim, there is more than one game in town...

"Intelligent Design has failed every valid test (i.e., all its testable hypotheses have been rejected). Rejection is tantamount to proof that the hypothesis is false but there can be a statistical risk that you have falsely rejected a true hypothesis. This is not so for Intelligent Design because most of the tests do not depend on statistical analysis of the data for confirmation."

That's patently false. What specific test has ID failed? Name it, please.

Intelligent Design has NOT failed every scientific test. Intelligent Design has in fact been proven to be able to program DNA (e.g. gene-splicing). Clearly an Intelligent process can program DNA because Man is already doing that very thing!

If an Intelligent Designer can program DNA, then it follows that Intelligent Design could be responsible for any or all known and observable speciation, pending further data and study.

That's a far cry from "failing every test"...

In other words, just because we see evidence of speciation does NOT mean that we see evidence of how said speciation was formed. Sure, it could have been natural (ala Evolution), but it could also have been un-natural (ala Intelligent Intervention).

Both could be true, particularly as people start tinkering with DNA. But we are faced with a situation where you have two open hypotheses, evolution and intelligent design/creation, both of which could be correct. We know life is a complex chemical system and not much else. Therefore, for all practical purposes, we are faced with selecting a single working hypothesis from the potentially infinite set of conceivable ones until such time as there is only one hypothesis left standing.

Fortunately, mathematics provides a formal solution for "best hypothesis" selection that will allow you to select the hypothesis most likely to be right. It doesn't make guarantees that the selection will be correct, but it does guarantee that it is the most probably correct. This bit of mathematics is more commonly known as "Occam's Razor", which was conjectured LONG before it was actually proven in mathematics. Occam's razor for the sake of this discussion basically states that the hypothesis with the fewest degrees of freedom is most likely to be correct. The reason I have to back the evolution hypothesis, knowing nothing else, is that it has one degree of freedom less then intelligent design. Therefore if my intent is to select the most rational hypothesis of the two, I am compelled to select evolution as the best working hypothesis because mathematics demands it. I might not even agree with it, but I would be a fool to deny that it is the most rational position lacking any bulletproof evidence for either side.

"Now, when you as a "high priest" of science can recreate, in your temple, the circumstances that ended in that simple frog then I will say that your arrogance and absolute faith in your personal dogma is justified." -- Texasforever

I work in an auto parts plant near Detroit. The frog project probably wouldn't get approved in the current economic environment.

Because you are an engineer (mechanical, I assume) you are aware of the use of algorithms for the purpose of performing repetitive tasks reliably. Think of natural selection as an algorithm for sorting winning combinations. How are new combinations generated for sorting? What constitutes "winning?" I'll bet that using the Hatley-Pirbhai Method you could establish all the necessary requirements for evolving a frog from any chosen precursor organism in a specified number of generations. The problem is indeterminate unless you tie it to the natural world with some known parameters -- mutation rates for each of several dozen different kinds of mutations -- for example. Don't forget to include cross-species exchange of genetic material and viral transduction (rates were measured following the early experiments with recombinant DNA). In the end you might get a frog but you could just as easily get something else entirely. The path has many forks and the wrong one can lead to extinction or a completely different life form. Thankfully you don't really have to do this because the experiment has already been done and the frog is here to prove it. The data record of the experiment is the frog DNA itself.

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