Posted on 02/19/2002 2:59:38 PM PST by Cameron
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.
How very embarrassing that this should have been overlooked.
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.
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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).
Both posit the usual chemical mechanisms. Evolution essentially hypothesizes that this is all that is required for speciation (which could very well be true even if intelligent design turned out to be the truth). While mutation and selection can be observed, the connection to speciation is only hypothesized. Intelligent design posits a designer (an extra degree of freedom) in addition to the usual chemistry. Neither position can prove that their positions are in fact how speciation has occurred in the past, so Bayes' theorem gets discarded and we are stuck with Occam's razor for discriminating between the two. In this case, the only difference between the two positions is the argument of whether or not a designer was responsible for speciation (and doesn't even address the issue of whether or not a designer is REQUIRED for speciation, which is a different question). In this scenario, Occam's razor would select the hypothesis of speciation being caused by mutation/selection (i.e. evolution), as it does not have the open variable of a designer in the mix. For the audience, "degrees of freedom" is essentially a count of how many unverified premises are utilized in the construction of the hypothesis. With the verification of the existence of a designer, both hypotheses would be on equal footing with respect to what is the most likely cause of a specific case of speciation.
Everything you said was true but you did not address the old "Frankenstein" question. What animates that mass of DNA? Everything else can be explained in scientific terms and research but that "spark of life", is the "missing link". To carry it even further, why is man the only known living entity with actual self-awarness and the ability to even question his own origins? If the ONLY purpose of evolution is survival of the fittest then the Apes passed that test with flying colors. In nature ther is no requirement for any living thing to have true intellect just the ability to hunt and feed itself. To take the position that all the species are somehow the result of beneficial mutations ignores the fact that most mutations are malevonant and in the end produce inferior beings. If or when man discovers that element (spark of life) and can reproduce it from scratch, then man becomes God and the question is settled. I stand by my assertion that those in the scientific community that are the most dogmatic on this issue are of the opinion that to even hint at the concept of intelligent design is to somehow admit that there are things they may never understand. Hell, accepted "science" changes day to day.
You obviously know very little about programming. All computer languages eventually convert their instructions into machine code. These are a very small set of instructions each of which has a specific purpose such as to move a number from one place to another, increase the number by one or decrease it by one. It is indeed very similar to the DNA instruction set.
That is utterly ridiculous. The chance of DNA producing a single gene randomly is more than winning the lottery seven or eight times in a row. To produce the over 20,000 genes in a human being is almost impossible, lets call it infinity -1. To say that the probabilities of evolution having created the life we see all around us rather than admit that an intelligent designer did it, is just an admission of close minded atheism.
Your statement just amounts to saying that because it exists, evolution did it. It is a tautology and it is no proof of anything.
Specificity, uniqueness, fixity, and irreducible complexity to name just a few of the predictions that ID folks have been foolish enough to suggest. Because ID cannot preclude natural selection its predictive value is nonexistent (i.e., it is always confounded by the presence of natural selection). This means that its proponents have been unable to make a prediction that separates ID from natural selection without simultaneously condemning ID to failure. This should be your first clue that ID has no merit as a scientific theory.
"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!" -- Southack
Why don't you understand the logical fallacy of your argument? Where is the laboratory with the PCR machine of the Intelligent Designer of all living things? Because we do something does not mean anyone or anything else can do it or ever has done it either the way we did it or any other way. On the other hand, if you knew a little more about how we came to acquire some of our techniques you would abandon your foolish notion that somebody or something has been purposely and secretly fiddling with DNA.
The way we do gene therapy, for example, is based entirely on the way we have found genes being transferred in nature. This natural process occurs at a rate that precludes the fixity of the genome and it is only one of many such processes.
"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." -- Southack
It does not follow. Ring species alone make this highly unlikely. What appears to be a single species is in fact two or more separate species at the extreme of its range or across gaps in the range. Yet this group interbreeds continuously across the contiguous portions of its range. Design is not responsible for this effect. It is a result of isolation and the random walk. You would know these things and possibly refrain from falsehood if you would just sit down with a good biology textbook. While you are at it you might also want to disabuse yourself of the misconceptions you have concerning the "Base Four" DNA coding you are always referring to. DNA uses four bases taken three at a time but codes for only 21 different amino acids. That means three bits have 21 possibilities and no more. And, by the way, the use of binary code does not of itself limit the complexity of the instruction set nor diminish the amount of data that can be stored. With five bits you have 32 possibilities but you are free to use as many bits as you like (go ahead and calculate the possibilities for a 64 bit system). Memory is also theoretically unlimited for the computer. (Even twenty years ago the Navy was able to routinely predict the effects in real time of a nuclear explosion on the hull of a submarine.) Biological complexity is more a function of the quaternary structures of the proteins.
Garbage In = Garbage Out. Whether the program fails to compile or runs anyway, it will not produce the desired response. The mistake will virtually always have an effect. This is not true of the DNA code at the codon level.
Sorry, I'm going to have to go with Vercingetorix on this one. But then, you knew that when you brought me into the debate, didn't you?
Since I'm here, my two-cent-addition is that Vercingetorix and Southack are not relying on the same assumptions with respect to computer code generation and mutation. I think Eric S. Raymond would characterize Southack's perspective as "The Cathedral" approach and Vercingetorix' perspective as "The Bazaar" approach.
(You're not gonna make me hit you over the head with Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar again, are you?)
At any rate, thanks for the bump. The insults on this thread are so much more exquisite than those on the "I Hate Hilary" threads.
You are clear, and you are wrong. In the case of cars, we have evidence of their purposeful design. We can actually know the designers and observe the process. So the "hypothesis" of ID for cars is a slam-dunk no-brainer. It's fact. But there is zero evidence for ID in the domain of biology (except for those recent occasions when we ourselves go around transplanting genes). Now then, a scientific theory must be based on observable evidence. If there is none, it isn't a theory, it's mere conjecture. Which is why I said that evolution is the only [scientific] game in town.
It most certainly is. But this "sweet code" just happened all by itself, didn't it? < /sarcasm>
And yet we see evidence of Intelligent Design when we look at a junkyard filled with buried cars. We can also observe the evidence of intelligent design when we watch Man program DNA via gene-splicing.
In contrast, when we look at the fossil record, we can't tell if speciations were caused naturally (ala Evolution) or by un-natural processes (ala Intelligent Design).
With such admitted evidence in hand, clearly there is more than "one game in town" to explain the origin of Life.
Except, Intelligent Design does make such a prediction.
Intelligent Design predicts that speciation will occur rapidly (i.e., a designer introduces a new model).
Early Evolutionists refuted ID by showing that the fossil record recorded long periods of time between speciation events, but as more fossils were uncovered, they had to abandon their original "glacial" view of speciation in favor of a new variant of Evolution: Punctuated Equilibrium.
In contrast, the prediction of Intelligent Design has remained constant.
The sheer existence of Punctuated Equilibrium as a replacement theory to Darwin's Evolution demonstrates that it was Darwinism which failed the first scientific test, not Intelligent Design.
"Why don't you understand the logical fallacy of your argument? Where is the laboratory with the PCR machine of the Intelligent Designer of all living things? Because we do something does not mean anyone or anything else can do it or ever has done it either the way we did it or any other way." - Vercingetorix
There is no logical flaw in saying that an Intelligent process can modify DNA because we have conclusive proof that Man has and can program DNA via gene-splicing.
In other words, Intelligent Design has been proven to be responsible for certain varieties of Life (i.e., those life forms for which Man has used his gene-splicing techniques).
Yet you rule out Intelligent Design as impossible because you say that it fails all scientific tests.
That's ridiculous, as I can show you Life form variants that have already been created by Intelligent Design (e.g. growing human organs in pigs).
That's what you based your Occam's Razor conclusion upon?
Most Darwinians claim that Evolution is dependent upon:
1. Appropriate environment,
2. Natural Selection, and
3. Random Mutations.
Most ID-er's claim that ID is dependent upon:
1. Appropriate environment and
2. Intelligent Designer.
3 degrees of freedom versus 2, yet you picked the loser and wrongly ascribed Occam's Razor as your reasoning.
That's not very scientific...
That doesn't mean a thing. We still see Base-4 programming in DNA because we see four different codons (A, C, G, and T). Whether or not all possibilities of combinations and permutations of Base-4 are used changes nothing.
See my private freepmail.
I am in the position of wanting to believe in free will, but believing so strongly in causality that I cannot.
Of course everybody--including me--behaves as if free will is the case.
As I have said before, when someone claims to have free will, my translation is: "My outputs are not functions of my inputs," a remarkable claim. The natural rejoinder: "Very well, what are your outputs functions of?"
Randomness and Heisenberg do not rescue free will: a random robot is still a robot.
I order chocolate; you order vanilla. Why? "We chose our flavors." But a hide-bound determinist (sort of, like, well, me) would ask: "Did not your entire past history conspire to ensure that you would order vanilla today?" And that past history stretches in an unbroken chain back to the big bang.
Can causality and free will coexist? I cannot imagine how. If there is a realm or subset of reality in which causality is not regnant, then how can there be any subset in which one is certain that is is regnant?...
Just more confusion from a confused mind.
--Boris
The problem with your argument is that ID is not a valid candidate for Occam's Razor - it's not a scientific theory. In order for it to become one you need to produce the Intelligent Designer. We know what the 3 things are you said evolution depends on. What/who in the world is the Intelligent Designer?
Regards.
On the contrary, it wasn't MY argument (i.e., Occam's Razor was Tortoise's argument and I merely showed the fallacy in his data by writing up the degrees of freedom for both theories in question) and Intelligent Design IS a valid scientific theory.
In fact, we have conclusive evidence and even proof that Intelligent Design is responsible for new varieties of life via gene-splicing, computer programs (the only thing in the known universe other than DNA to store data, process data, and replicate), as well as fossil-style evidence (e.g. cars buried in junkyards).
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