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).

With that in mind, how *possible* is it for those monkeys to finish the entire play? Or how possible is it for those primordial organisms to evolve into the thousands of Earth species WITHOUT design?

The million monkey theorem and bootstrapping chemistry use very different mathematics for calculating their probability. Not making this distinction is a common fallacy I see used in these arguments. In chemistry, the chemical interactions are not at all random in a mathematical sense, and if they were we wouldn't be able to produce complex chemicals reliably or in quantity. In chemistry, it is very possible to have simple chemical systems spontaneously bootstrap themselves to levels of complexity orders of magnitude greater than when they started. If chemistry was actually mathematically random, then the probability would be vanishingly small that such molecules would spontaneously assemble, never mind do it every time in quantity.

Your Designer is limited to the kind of thing evolution can do and the platypus is no exception.

Observe Southhack's approach, which I'm weary of pointing out to him: "We can now do some designing, so this is therefore proof (or at least powerful evidence) of ID." Consider how, in the long dreary history of supernaturalism, the alleged "proof" of supernatural creation was the opposite -- that is, we can't possibly do such things, therefore they are a miracle, therefore Zeus (or whatever) rules the sky.

Now, sensing that the game is about to change, because it won't be long before we can produce a self-replicator in the lab, which removes their long-cherished mystery, the supernaturalists are scrambling to change the game. The new line of "reasoning" is the exact opposite of what it has been in the past. Now, they chant: "If we can make designs, this is proof (or at least evidence) of ID. Thus ID is a serious scientific theory." Heads the swamis win; tails the swamis win. Their superstition is invincible.

[Plato says: "Vade's right; I am no exception."]

To your #296

It's heartening to see your saplings of more supple thought among the tall oaks of more hardened thinking, such as Southack and others display on this thread.

If God had not created evolution as the main guide and modifier for all life, everything He Created would have long become extinct, due to the constant geological upheaval and changing climatic conditions present on this world of His.

Over millennia, static, unchangeable forms of life would have rendered this planet as barren as it's own moon!

"That poison spur you lawyer on is simply a platypus innovation, like its electrosensing muzzle. It's no more impossible than a bee's stinger or rattlesnake's fang, and it's much newer and less efficient than those aforementioned structures."

The innovations that are unique to the entire othy platipus genus are simply my way of showing an example of a big design change with no incremental path. The platipus alone has the electro-sensing bill and poisoned spurs on its feet.

This has nothing to do with claiming that the platipus evolving from something is "impossible" so much as it has to do with being evidence that we have in our possession a species that currently meets the requirements of a big, non-incremental design change which supports what Intelligent Design predicts in a way and a place that Evolutionary Theory does not predict.

"The million monkey theorem and bootstrapping chemistry use very different mathematics for calculating their probability. Not making this distinction is a common fallacy I see used in these arguments."

I love it! You are still in denial! This is great! You're now claiming that the MATH (which at one time you actually promised to produce yourself) is now non-applicable to the chemical data stored in DNA!

Go read Post #310. The MATH shows that DNA sequencing is NOT going to appear randomly even if 17 Billion planets work on the problem for 17 Billion years!

"Observe Southhack's approach ... Now, sensing that the game is about to change, because it won't be long before we can produce a self-replicator in the lab, which removes their long-cherished mystery, the supernaturalists are scrambling to change the game. The new line of "reasoning" is the exact opposite of what it has been in the past. Now, they chant: "If we can make designs, this is proof (or at least evidence) of ID. Thus ID is a serious scientific theory."

Two problems with your rant:
1. I've never said the opposite of what I've been posting on this thread, so there is no "scrambling to change the game." You'll have to deal with my points, including the MATH in Post #310, on their own merits, as I've got no past history that would call into doubt my sincerity of my current postings.
2. If Man can design things and program DNA, then this really is evidence of Intelligent Design.

1. Your response to a reasoned and well-thought out argument is juvenile and idiotic. Please, dance with simpering glee some more, and maybe you can alienate the rest of us. Then, you will both wrong AND alone.

2. It is plain for all to see that you are wilfully avoiding precise definitions. You have confused the definition of "trivial," as has been pointed out to you. You have confused the definitions of "improbable" and "impossible." You have confused "large but finite" with "infinite". This has been pointed out ot you, and you fail to respond or acknowledge. Why?

3. Your typing-monkey link does not disprove the essential argument that any possible but improbable event can occur within a finite time. The length of the finite interval depends on the probability of the event, but as long as the probability is non-zero, the event WILL occur.

4. Your application of Occam's razor is faulty. At the simplest, the tally is thus:
Evolution
1. The observed universe exists.

I.D.
1. The observed universe exists.
2. A designer exists independent of the observed universe.

I am sure you will suggest that additional assumptions must be added to Evolution. They are hairsplitting and arbitrary, as are the obvious additions to ID ("The designer has the ability to create the universe", "The designer wants to influence the universe", etc.). ID cannot overcome this fundamental imbalance in the required assumptions - that is why it fails Occam's razor.

4. Cars are foolish analogies to fossils. Cars do not live. Dinosaurs and whales did. If we found a junkyard composed entirely of '88 Buicks, we would not assume that they were "related" to each other, that some had given birth to others. We know Buicks do not live. Just as similarly, we have no possible mechanism to suppose that Buicks are self-replicating (like nanotech robots might be). Also, we know that plastic and pressed steel do not occur naturally. Thus, a designer is the only hypothesis available. However, we do know that whales reproduce, and that whales occur naturally - thus, we do not need to hypothesize a designer.

5. ID is not genetic engineering. You may say that it is, but it is not. What is the ID explanation for the stunning similarity between human and chimp DNA? What reason does ID give for choosing pigs to clone human-usable organs in, and not housecats or snakes? Why would your fanciful ID geneticist not try to grow replacement tranplant eyes on a fern? And, according to ID, why might some of those choices be better than others?

That's enough for now... Don't forget to visit the Crevo List for all the latest!

"Your typing-monkey link does not disprove the essential argument that any possible but improbable event can occur within a finite time. The length of the finite interval depends on the probability of the event, but as long as the probability is non-zero, the event WILL occur."

That's incorrect. A very low probability event will not occur in a finite period of time. In an infinite amount of time, yes, but not in a finite amount of time. The known universe has been around less than 17 Billion years. This is a finite, not an infinite, amount of time.

The MATH which supports my point and debunks your folklore in listed along with charts, equations, and calculations in the link provided for your convenience in Post #310.

Go forth and read it. You need it.

"Their superstition is invincible." -- PatrickHenry

Southack's Top Ten Rules for maintaining the Invincible Superstition:

1) Pretend not to comprehend any relevant information.
2) Compartmentalize all facts to prevent comparison.
3) Anything that can be easily understood by someone with a third grade education is automatically nonsense.
4) No lie is too big if it supports the superstition.
5) Keep the mind free of any knowledge of the basic subject matter so as not to lose sight of the superstition.
6) Take everything out of context.
7) The rules of logic and evidence were made to be broken.
8) Never discuss randomness and selection together.
9) Never doubt the superstition.
10) When in doubt, see rule #9.

"4. Your application of Occam's razor is faulty. At the simplest, the tally is thus:
Evolution
1. The observed universe exists.

I.D.
1. The observed universe exists.
2. A designer exists independent of the observed universe."

First, it wasn't my idea to use Occam's Razor. I only illustrated in Post #194 how Occam's Razor would appear if one insisted upon applying Occam's Razor to choose between Evolution and Intelligent Design.

With that said, most Evolutionists insist that for Evolution to occur in an appropriate environment, one must have Natural Selection and Random Mutations.

You seem to have ommitted those items from your version of Occam's exercise, however. Do you honestly hold that you can have Evolution without Natural Selection and Random Mutations, or did you merely omit them so that you could force-fit Occam's Razor to unscientifically support your pre-disposed "answer"?

"ID is not genetic engineering. You may say that it is, but it is not. What is the ID explanation for the stunning similarity between human and chimp DNA? What reason does ID give for choosing pigs to clone human-usable organs in, and not housecats or snakes? Why would your fanciful ID geneticist not try to grow replacement tranplant eyes on a fern? And, according to ID, why might some of those choices be better than others?"

1.The question is not whether ID is genetic engineering, but rather whether you can have genetic engineering without intelligent design.

2.Similarity between the DNA code for chimps and humans is analogous to the stunning similarity in code between Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word. One expects to see similarities between designs whenever code re-use is present. In DNA, this code re-use is observed in shared genes. In computer code, this re-use is observed in Objects, API's, DLL's, and subroutines.

3.Why would an intelligent designer use one animal over another life form for various new processes? Because it is intelligent to use that which offers the easiest, quickest, cheapest, and most predictable desired output.

You seem to have ommitted those items from your version of Occam's exercise, however. Do you honestly hold that you can have Evolution without Natural Selection and Random Mutations, or did you merely omit them so that you could force-fit Occam's Razor to unscientifically support your pre-disposed "answer"?

Natural Selection occurs and is observerd. Therefore it is part of the observable universe and is covered in both sets of assumptions. Mutation is also observed, and is covered in both sets of assumptions.

You are splitting hairs. As noted, there are also a few more assumptions I could add to ID in equally arbitrary fashion: that the Designer can create the universe, that the designer can change the universe, that the designer can cause the 'spark of life', that the designer can create species, that the designer created billions of independent separate speices, etc.... There, now that's three more for ID. But this is again, hair splitting.

Your whole defense of ID has been "well, ID can explain everything just as well as evolution." Except that ID ends up explaining that the world looks exactly like evolution predicts. It offers no additional explanatory power, and still requires that fundamental super-natural assumption of a designer.

I ask again - what does ID predict that is different from what evolution predicts? How would you falsify ID?

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