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).
The ten individual claims are taken verbatim from our previous exchanges. It is not my fault that you do not understand your errors as I have generously pointed them out to you several times. If there is a rule that I have listed which you are not purposely using I should be glad to hear of it. The record is clear that you have acted in precisely the manner described in those ten rules whether you realize it or not.
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?
Word and Excel do not reproduce themselves, and thus do not evolve in the biological sense. Therefore, the fact that their code is substantially similar, and that they were designed, is not relevant to a discussion of biological evolution or design. That's all I was arguing. Do not try to shift the argument.
Computer viruses are a good example of where evolution might take place. However, the error-checking routines in computer copying programs are good enough that there are fewer opportunities for "mutation" in computer viruses than there are in nature. In addition, computer codes are far less robust than genetic codes (especially viruses, shich must exist in very precise and technical environments - e.g., get the wrong port number, and it won't get access), so minor changes are more likely to be fatal.
Finally, the observant will note how you cram two ideas together: the idea that software is reused and that it replicates. There are no self-replicating viruses of the size or complexity of Microsoft Word or Excel.
I know of no ID-ers who accept evolution above the micro level. You're welcome to put yourself in this position, but you're the first in my experience if you do. If you don't shoot down evolution, you simply don't need the Designer.
ID-ers spend so much time trying to shoot down evolution that there's essentially no other intellectual content to their literature.
He made that assumption because it happens by default. Once a monkey makes an error in Hamlet's first sentence, the data stream for the full sentence starts over. The monkey really just represents randomness. Once you find that one part of your random string of output doesn't match your first sentence, you re-start looking for that sentence again in the output. That's the same as saying that the monkey starts over. The monkey isn't really starting over, of course, it's just banging away on the keyboard, but we start over in the sense that we re-start looking for a match again in the monkey's output as soon as we find the first error.
This applies to the data stored in DNA just as easily as it does to the data stored in Hamlet. As soon as you see that the random sequence no longer matches your search pattern, you re-start at that point looking for a match on the first data byte.
"No, Intelligent Design does not explain it." - cracker
Oh please.
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.
My point was that you are trying to describe the abilities and preferences of a supernatural being beyond our ability to comprehend or measure. You have no way to know what is "easy" or "hard" for such a creature(s?), and your conjecture is the merest gossamer. It is even less of a scientific theory than ID. TO the extent that your theory relies for its explanatory power on the unknown and unknowable prefernces and predilictions of a supernatural being, it is myth or legend, not science.
Those are all incorrect assumptions, not supportable by facts.
I used the platipus as an example of a big design change being introduced. That's what the current fossil record supports. This is predicted by Intelligent Design. If it's predicted by Evolution, then fine, but that's not the focus of that example.
Southack's Top Ten Rules for maintaining the Invincible Superstition:You're doing pretty good, even if you're no gore3000. Did he teach you these?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.
I particularly like number 8. So many Cs like to chirp on "randomness doesn't go anywhere." (Yes it does, with the square root of the number of iterations/generations.) "Survival of the fittest is a tautology, 'The survivors survive.'" Algebra is full of tautologies, but you get to things you didn't know fooling around with them.
Anyway, the joint operation of variation and selection isn't really random and isn't a tautology.
Rest assured, Intelligent Designers using gene-splicing to program DNA such that pigs grow organs that are useful to humans is fact and science, not myth, legend, or magic.
"No, Intelligent Design does not explain it." - cracker
Oh please.
Indeed? Would you mind answering the post, and explaining why you can conflated I.D. with i.d.? IF you have forgotten my response, I can repost it here:
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.
And that's absolute bull.
In 1971, two fossil platypus teeth were discovered in the Tirari Desert in South Australia. They are about 25 million years old, and have been named Obdurodon insignis. The modern platypus has only vestigial teeth which are replaced by horny pads when it is still a juvenile. The fossil teeth are similar enough to these vestigial teeth to allow identification, and they show that ancient platypuses had teeth as adults.From Creationism and the Platypus.Since then, central Australia has produced a few more isolated teeth, a fragment of a lower jaw, and a part of a pelvis.
In 1984, an opalised jaw fragment with three teeth in place, belonging to either a platypus or a platypus-like monotreme, was discovered at Lightning Ridge in New South Wales. This fossil was 110 million years old, and is named Steropodon galmani (Archer, Flannery, Ritchie, & Molnar, 1985). It was the first known mammal from the Mesozoic (the Age of Dinosaurs) in Australia. It may have been the largest mammal from the Cretaceous period anywhere in the world, although it is less than twice the size of the modern platypus.
A few fossil teeth were discovered in 1984 at the Riversleigh site in Queensland. This was followed in 1985 by a spectacular find: an almost complete skull of a fossil platypus about 15 to 20 million years old. This has been named Obdurodon dicksoni (Archer, Jenkins, Hand, Murray, & Godthelp. 1992; Archer, Hand, & Godthelp, 1994). Its skull is more generalized, and about 25% longer, than that of the modern platypus. Some other fossils, including a partial lower jaw, have since been discovered at Riversleigh.
In 1991 and 1992, Obdurodon-like teeth were discovered in Argentina in strata dated to 61-63 million years old. They have been named Monotrematum sudamericanum (Archer, 1995). South America, like Australia, was once part of the super-continent of Gondwana, and this find shows that platypuses existed in other parts of Gondwana besides Australia.
Rest assured, Intelligent Designers using gene-splicing to program DNA such that pigs grow organs that are useful to humans is fact and science, not myth, legend, or magic.
Once again, you conflate I.D. with i.d.. Note that HUMAN genetic engineers use gene-splicing to grow pigs in labs, and their motives and preferences are easily determined. The hypothesized Intelligent Designer of the Universe is a mythical or supernatural being who is totally beyond our comprehension.
You have yet to offer an explanation for why the former allows you to make claims about the latter.
Huse offers three reasons why the platypus should not be considered a transitional form:
"1. Platypus fossils are exactly the same as modern forms."Since the most important platypus fossils were found after Huse wrote his book in 1983, one can only wonder what fossils he is referring to. It seems unlikely, given the general level of scholarship of his book, that Huse would have known of the few obscure platypus fossils that had been found at the time (1983). If he did, it should have been apparent that his statement was not only wrong, but the exact opposite of the truth: in the only feature in which they could then be compared, fossil and modern platypuses were significantly different, since the fossil forms were toothed.
As for the rest of the body, Huse's statement is totally unsupported. It would be reasonable to guess that fossil and modern forms might have differed elsewhere in the body, and later finds have confirmed this, at least for the head.
The evidence of a big design introduction is the platipus. No one disputes that we have said evidence. Is it unique? It's the only mammal in history that is poisonous and probably the only mammal with an electro-sensing bill.
That's representative of a big design introduction, as predicted by Intelligent Design.
If you have evidence that contradicts that prediction, please present it.
You are trying to debate a straw man of your own creation rather than my posts. If you want to talk about a mythical, supernatural being beyond our comprehension and shoot down said hypothesis, feel free. Just don't confuse your straw man with any content in my posts, and don't drag me into such ridiculous debates.
You are obeying Southack's Rules #1,6,7, and 8 (you always obey rules #9 and 10).
You are still mightily confused. Grammar is an arbitrary set of rules. Matching can be done without intelligence. You can use a sieve to sort objects by matching size for example. The fact that you are a purposeful liar is evident. Here is the proof:
"In no way, shape, or form can complex programs or works of Shakespeare EVER be demonstrated to appear out of randomness no matter how much finite time you have, no matter how much computing power you throw at it, no matter what you do." -- Southack to Tortoise
Then you are so bold as to assert that simple sequence recognition software is somehow "INTELLIGENCE" and therefore out of bounds.
I have been overly generous in attributing your faults to simple ignorance and the enthusiasm of the misguided zealot. I was wrong. You are intentionally deceitful and, even worse, you lack the means and the desire to effect an improvement in your character. You also have no desire to add one whit to the present meager sum of your knowledge.
That's representative of a big design introduction, as predicted by Intelligent Design.
You're just repeating the already discredited. I'm not going to go around in circles with you. The platypus isn't the only monotreme. It has two distant-cousin species of echidna. You have nothing that suggests a designer or the lack of an evolutionary tree. In fact, you have nothing at all but the old creationist gap game.
I see. So let me ask you this. How does this have an analogy in the chemical processes that might occur to create DNA? I don't think Mr. Watson appreciates the differerences between reality and the statistics he generates, and I wish to see if you understand the fundamental differences between his argument and how the world really works. Do you?
I wa just clarifying your imprecision. You identified intelligent desingers in biotech labs genetically engineering pigs. I pointed out that they are human. Could you explain how it is that human biologists are proof for a supernatural being? You have yet to do so, and it would seem central to your argument that genetic engineering supports ID as a explanation for the origin of species.
Please answer the rest of the post:
You have yet to offer an explanation for why the former allows you to make claims about the latter.
That was not at issue. You are shifting again.
Go back and re-read the argument you had. All that was claimed was that mathematcially, the principle in the typing-monkey problem was valid: that events of even low probability can be shown to occur within a finite (though very long) period of time. You argued that it was not valid. It has been shown to be valid, and your ignorance laid bare. Now you raise, for the first time, a new argument about evolution and the finite age of the universe as an effort to dismiss your mistake. Why? Maybe you should restate your argument with more clarity.
I note that you have not responded to this:
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?
NO response.
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