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).
Yes, but our universe has only been around for 17 Billion years. You'll have to work within that time period for any finite-time-based theory such as Evolution.
No, I'm simply listing all the degrees of freedom for both theories, per the pre-requisites for Occam's Razor. If Natural Selection and Random Mutation are required for Evolutionary Theory, then list them as degrees of freedom on their half of your Occam chart. If they aren't required then don't.
But simply not listing something because you don't like the final answer in unscientific. Please see Post #194 for an honest example of Occam's Razor.
Also, please note that I am not the one who insists upon using Occam's Razor to choose between Evolution and Intelligent Deisgn. But for goodness sakes, if you are going to insist upon using Occam's Razor, at least use it honestly.
What point did I ommit?
Add a little algorithm that picks letter sequences as they appear to match dictionary entries, checks all combinations formed out of these words, selects only for grammatically correct phrases of those combinations, filter and match it to the existing text of Shakespeare's work, reuse any word or phrase as needed and you could get one monkey and a computer to do the job for you in about the time it would take the monkey to type enough letters to fill the book. The difference is that you have added selection to the random process.
Probability arguments that do not include selection have zero relevance to the real world where selection operates continuously.
No, the difference is that you have added INTELLIGENCE to your process. It is no longer either random or natural.
What you've done is demonstrate that an Intelligent Process can cretae the works of Shakespeare. That's never been in dispute.
Also, you seem to have fallen on your face in regards to being able to substantiate the ten claims that you made in Post #352. If you can't substantiate them and want to appear even remotely intellectually honest, then you'll have to retract them.
Define genetic engineering. If you mean that genetic codes can be altered, there are many natural processes that do that: mutation, substitution, duplication, viruses, etc. Is that genetic engineering? If so, then indeed, genetic engineering happens all the time without intelligent design.
Or do you mean purposeful change to a species to reach a goal? Well, that obviously requires intelligence, because intent requires a thing capable of intending. But before you claim victory, remember that evolution does not have a purpose or a goal: it just happens, much as the water has no purpose in flowing in the river - it just does.
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.
Much like cars, Microsoft Word does not reproduce itself. We do not theorize that Excel evolved form Word because there is no mechanism that could be proposed: the code has no intrinsic ability to create copies of itself. If it did, then errors might creep in over successive generations, and we might see the code evolve. Indeed, MS programs are so buggy that we might see improvements!
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.
Any intelligent designer you propose would have to have powers that to us would seem as magic. How can you know what is easiest or quickest for such a being? Indeed, the easiest and quickest method would to do nothing at all: to let evolution (which you still do not disprove, but rather only say "me too" to) take its course. But, since you have now fully entered the world of the supernatural by imagining the attributes and preferences of your designer, science cannot follow.
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.You have no evidence that the platypus's adaptations were a sudden big change, whenever they happened. All you have in that particular case is a scarcity of evidence for whatever it was that did happen.
Whenever we do have evidence for the orgins of a feature, it's always gradualistic. That's why it's no great shakes to hypothesize that the parts of the tree of life that we can't yet directly observe are more of the same old thing.
When scientists speak of genetic engineering, they are referring to the current procedures of using gene-splicing to obtain a desired organ from a donor species.
Does Evolution explain how we grow organs in pigs for use in humans, or does Intelligent Design explain it?
See my 366 regarding self-replication and natural explanation.
Software reproduces itself everyday. If you've ever had a virus emailed to you then you might have even seen software that reproduced itself on your very computer! Likewise, different software is derived from older programs every day.
Does Evolution explain that behavior or does Intelligent Design explain it?
"Any intelligent designer you propose would have to have powers that to us would seem as magic. How can you know what is easiest or quickest for such a being? Indeed, the easiest and quickest method would to do nothing at all: to let evolution (which you still do not disprove, but rather only say "me too" to) take its course." - cracker
I doubt that any geneticist in any lab on this planet would agree with your statement that letting Evolution run its course is the quickest and easiest method for creating new varieties of life that have medical use for humans.
I will repeat myself a third time. After that I will assume you are willfully ignoring the explanation.
Natural Selection and Mutation are observed facts of the natural world. I listed "existence of the observed universe" as a prerequisite for evolution (and for ID). Thus, they are accounted for. Note that I did not list the existence of gravity, the sun, or water. Those are also all observed facts of the universe, and the only assumption that needs to be made is that the universe exists. I suppose I could include an assumption that our sensory perceptions are an accurate and true reflection of the universe, but that seemed unneccessary, especially since that assumption is also required for ID.
As stated before, ID requires all of the assumptions of evolution: those relating to the existence of the natural world and our ability to perceive it. ID then further requires assumptions about the existence of the supernatural. Thus, ID requires ADDITIONAL assumptions, and is rejected by Occam's Razor as a less likely hypothesis.
To the extent you dispute the evidence for evolution in the natural world (fossils, DNA, speciation, mutation rates, etc.), that is a matter for scientfic research and investigation and debate. But thus far, you have not made those arguments.
I have a platipus. That is evidence. From that evidence, I stated that the platipus appears to support the prediction of Intelligent Design for the occassional big new design introduction.
On the other hand, you have a scarcity of evidence. It is you who needs to come up with fossils that show a gradual evolution into the platipus. Your lack of evidence for your theory is your problem, not mine.
Also, you still haven't retracted your ten claims in Post #352. Am I to conclude that you can neither substantiate those claims nor muster the intellectual honesty to retract them, or do you just need more time?
Most Darwinians claim that Evolution is dependent upon:Occam didn't say doodlesquat about "degrees of freedom." It's about overall simplicity and economy of supposition. However complicated the evolution scenario may be--it can have elements beyond mutation and natural selection when you get into the dirty details--it's a logically consistent, known scenario that has no funny external invisible elements. It only has to assume that when/if we learn more about what has happened/can happen/does happen we could in theory completely understand our history. (We'll never actually gather enough data to do that, of course, simply because some of the data record is gone.)
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.
ID has to assume that what we know now is misleading--amounting to a red herring--because naturalistic explanations can never be sufficient. It further has to assume forces and facts not in evidence: magical beings or supertechnological aliens amounting to the same thing.
That's at least 1 against 2, favor evolution.
If you're asking that question, then you didn't understand the math (and its implications for a universe that is less than 17 Billion years old) in Post #310.
No, Intelligent Design does not explain it. Intelligent design is a theory that the universe was designed and created by an intelligent being. I'm not sure how that necessarily predicts that individuals in lab coats will be mucking around with ribonucleaic acids. Unless you propose that the Designer independently and specially created thost scientists, lab coats and all.
You are correct that genetic engineering involves intelligence and design (lower case), but in that sense so does every creative endeavor man has ever undertaken. I am not sure you want to cite Beavis and Butthead as evidence for ID - it will be hard to get it in the curriculum.
I have examined your platypus claims in detail in post 337. The platypus fits on the tree of life just fine. Note that there could be creatures found that tend to invalidate the hypothesis that there is a tree structure to life at all, which would be great for the design hypothesis, but it's getting very late for that. It ain't gonna happen.
The platypus is basically a modern transitional from reptiles to mammals. It has a sketchy but long fossil history. Where in this history are you even claiming these sudden appearances happened? You have no data and no clue. You're just hiding in the data gaps, like Duane Gish. (Except he's still hiding in gaps that no longer exist.)
There's no more to your game than that.
Why does it have to assume that? Where does Intelligent Design preclude Evolution as being mutally exclusive in its theory?
Please, show me how you drew such a conclusion.
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