Posted on 06/23/2008 3:05:46 PM PDT by betty boop
What is Life/Non-life in Nature?
by Jean F. Drew
Everywhere we see the “behavior” of life/non-life (death) in nature; but that doesn’t tell us what life/non-life IS.
Darwin’s theory of evolution doesn’t help with this question. It presupposes the existence of life axiomatically, and then proceeds to speak of the origin and evolution of species. Its fundamental assumption is that biological evolution is a wholly naturalistic, material process governed by the laws of physics and chemistry, with random variation and natural selection as the principal drivers of the system. Central to the Darwinist view is that life forms — species — evolve into completely other, more complex species; and this is so because all living beings are members of a Tree of Life that is rooted in a single common ancestor (the theory is silent on where the common ancestor came from).
But Darwinist theory doesn’t tell us what life is, or where it came from, just how it evolves (or speciates) under purely materialistic and naturalistic constraints. It is not a theory of life, and I think Darwin would agree with that.
This does not prevent theorists from speculating that, given the preferred scientific cosmology of a material universe of infinite size and unlimited duration — no beginning, no end — anything that can happen, will happen in time. Therefore, it is plausible to suppose that life itself may have originated from random chemical reactions that somehow “lucked out” and “stuck,” giving us the origin of life and its ubiquity and persistence henceforth.
The important point is that Darwinism rests on a certain cosmology, or world view. That worldview is increasingly being falsified by modern physics. (See below.)
It seems doubtful that an investigation carried out at the level of physical chemistry can demonstrate the emergence of life from non-living matter. This is called abiogenesis, which describes the situation where non-life (inorganic matter) spontaneously bootstraps itself into a living organism.
Miller and Urey attempted to demonstrate abiogenesis under laboratory conditions, using simulated lightning strikes on a suitable “pre-biotic soup.” They got a bunch of amino acids. But amino acids are the building blocks of living systems, not living systems themselves.
Wimmer got a better result in his attempt to create a polio virus, a living organism. He actually succeeded! But his “recipe” involved far more than the material “cell-free juice” he used as his culture: He introduced information into the mix: Wimmer began with the information sequence of RNA which he synthesized to DNA (because RNA cannot be synthesized) and then synthesized the message from DNA to RNA. When he added the message to a cell free juice, it began transmitting and duplicating. And he got himself a polio virus — a living being….
But the important thing to bear in mind is that, although Wimmer was successful in creating a living being, he was not the author of the information that led to this result. It was already “there” — and no scientist claims to know its source. Indeed, physics so far has been unable to locate any source for this type of life-generating information within the physical world. In other words, scientists recognize the indispensable requirement of information to living systems, they see that it is indeed “there”; but they cannot say how it got there, or from whence it came.
Consider also that the universe itself seems to be “informed,” in the sense of displaying evidence of some remarkable “fine-tuning” that guides its evolution. Physical chemistry itself rests on, is informed by, deeper principles: the physical laws, which in turn depend on certain ubiquitous universal constants — the speed of light; the value of pi; Plank’s constant; Plank time; the resonance precision required for the existence of carbon (a necessary element for life); the explosive power of the Big Bang precisely matched to the power of gravity (its density precisely matched with the critical density of the universe); the delicate balance in the strong nuclear force; the precise balancing of gravitational force and electromagnetic force; the meticulous balance between the number of electrons and protons; the precision in electromagnetic force and the ratio of proton mass to electron mass and neutron mass to proton mass; the Big Bang’s defiance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and gravity’s cumulative effect; etc., for examples.
If the universe were at bottom “random” in its evolution, these instances of evident fine-tuning would be inexplicable. The fact is we cannot say whether a system is random or not without knowing its symmetrical properties.
The “fans of random” speak and act as if they think the problem of symmetry is irrelevant to their concerns. Yet to the extent that they recognize the universe conforms to physical laws (and usually they do), the symmetry problem cannot be obviated. For laws demonstrate the property of what mathematicians call symmetry. A symmetry of some mathematical object — and the physical laws are inherently mathematical structures — is any transformation that preserves the object’s structure.
A practical application of the principle of symmetry can be found in Einstein’s observation (in his 1905 paper on Special Relativity, the same that gave us his magnificent unification of mass and energy, e = mc2) that the laws of nature are the same for all observers, regardless of their particular space-time positions.
It is evident that there are symmetries in nature, and also that mathematics has been amazingly successful in teasing them out. A favorite story is Reimann’s geometry of curved spaces. He “created” this geometry at a time when no one believed that geometry could be other than flat (Euclidean). So Reimann put his geometry on the shelf where it sat for about 50 years, gathering dust. Then a friend of Einstein pointed him to Reimann’s geometry (and Ricci’s tensor) as possible keys to the elucidation of the problems of special relativity. And they exactly did the trick.
Indeed, mathematicians have been so good at doing this sort of thing — creating mathematical systems with an eye to symmetry, and finally beauty — that Eugene Wigner marveled about “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in its ability to model and describe nature.
At this point, it seems useful to widen our purview and revisit cosmology, for now we are speaking of the universe as a whole, and cosmology is the branch of knowledge that deals with the universe as an integrated and (some would say) even living system (in some fashion).
Cosmology is conventionally defined as: (1) a branch of philosophy dealing with the origin, processes, and structure of the universe; and (2), the astrophysical study of the structure and constituent dynamics of the universe, with a particular eye on the construction and modeling of a comprehensive theory that describes such structure and dynamics. The latter is the scientific approach. Note that (2) does not explicitly address the question of origin.
Indeed, questions of origin, both of the universe and of life, seem to be troubling to many scientists. Historically, their preferred cosmology has been the eternal universe model, wherein the universe, thought to be infinite in size, just always was, having no beginning or end; it just goes along in periods of expansions and contractions in a sort of self-conserving “boom and bust” cycle forever (no second law of thermodynamics to bother it).
Now in an infinite, eternal universe, anything can happen. And so this “classical perspective” of biology anticipates that the origin of life involves “random chemicals reacting for eons and finally lucking out, resulting in a living cell coming together,” as Harold Morowitz explains it.
But then satellite observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation starting in the 1960s provided striking evidence that the universe actually had a beginning. That is, it is not eternal, and it is not infinite. The CMBR — which is universal in extent — is thought to be the “echo” of the original “big bang,” which constituted the creation event of the universe in which we live, and which powers the cosmic space-time expansion. Thus the universe truly can be thought to have “initial conditions.”
The troubling thing about the big bang/inflationary universe theory is the suggestion that the universe was either created out of nothing, or if it was created out of something, then there’s no way we can detect or prove that cause. Using a “time-reversal symmetry transformation” here — running evolutionary time “backwards” like a videotape played in reverse — the laws of physics break down at the Planck Era — 10–43 of the first second following the big bang. “Prior” to that, there is no space, no time, no physical laws of nature, no matter; it’s pure nihil: Nothing.
The nothingness “before” the creation of the universe is the most complete void that we can imagine — no space, time or matter existed. It is a world without place, without duration or eternity, without number — it is what the mathematicians call “the empty set.” Yet this unthinkable void converts itself into the plenum of existence — a necessary consequence of physical laws. Where are these laws written into that void? What “tells” the void that it is pregnant with a possible universe? It would seem that even the void is subject to a law, a logic that exists prior to space and time. — Heinz Pagels
Which of course is precisely what Genesis says: The Creation is “ex nihilo,” initiated by and proceeding according to the Word, the Logos of God, Who Is the Law of the Void as well as of the Creation, the “logic that exists prior to space and time.”
Evidently this is not a scientific statement, though I believe it is a truthful one. Still it is true that some physicists (and biologists) find the idea of a beginning of space and time out of nothing deeply disturbing for whatever reason. Taking into effect the evidence that leads to this conclusion, some have sought a “non-theistic” explanation for the phenomenon of the Big Bang. This cosmology grudgingly acknowledges that the universe did have a beginning, postulating its origin as a random fluctuation in a universal quantum vacuum field. But of course, this line of reasoning is silent about where the universal vacuum field itself came from in which a random fluctuation can occur, or how time and space got started so that events can occur in it.
This view (non-theistic cosmogenesis) is fallacious, however, because sudden quantum appearances don’t really take place out of “nothing.” A larger quantum field is first required before this can happen, but a quantum field can hardly be described as being “nothing.” Rather, it is a thing of unsearchable order and complexity, whose origin we can’t even begin to explain. Thus, trying to account for the appearance of the universe in a sudden quantum fluctuation doesn’t do away with the need for a Creator at all; it simply moves the whole problem backward one step to the unknown origin of the quantum field itself. — M. A. Corey
Whether your cosmology is philosophical or scientific, ultimately it rests on an unknown that is directly unknowable, a mystery. Scientists just as much as anybody else ponder the origin question, despite the fact that their formal methods cannot help them much there.
Cosmologically speaking, scientists get much better traction with the problem of constructing and modeling a comprehensive theory that describes, not the origin, but the structure and dynamics of the universe. But even here, they run into “mysteries.” Such as evidence for the almost eerie fine-tuning of the universe necessary for the inception, evolution, and support of Life. As Freeman Dyson put it, “The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.”
Take just one example from among many, the just mentioned universal vacuum. Because the vacuum is not “nothing,” it has energy, specifically “vacuum energy” — the energy content of empty space. Ian Stewart notes:
As it happens, the observed value [of vacuum energy] is very, very small, around 10–120, but it is not zero.
According to the conventional “fine-tuning” story, this particular value is exactly right for life to exist. Anything larger than 10–118 makes local space-time explode; anything smaller than 10–120 and space-time contracts in a cosmic crunch and disappears. So the “window of opportunity” for life is very small. By a miracle, our universe sits neatly within it.
But Stewart is a tough-minded mathematical scientist, and so evidently feels constrained to add:
The “weak anthropic principle” points out that if our universe were not constituted the way it is, we wouldn’t be here to notice, but that leaves open the question why there is a “here” for us to occupy. The “strong anthropic principle” says that we’re here because the universe was designed specially for life to exist — which is mystical nonsense. No one actually knows what the possibilities would be if the vacuum energy were markedly different from what it is. We know a few things that would go wrong — but we have no idea what might go right instead. Most of the fine-tuning arguments are bogus.”
What a relief that Professor Stewart thinks that only “most” of the fine-tuning arguments are bogus, and not all of them! One of the things likely to “go wrong” under his scenario would be the end of life as we know it on this planet, and with it intelligence. But other than that, his is a respectable argument, even though it would probably be entirely moot under different values for the vacuum energy, since intelligent beings probably would not then be around to entertain it.
There is an abundance of evidence from the precision of the fundamental values of the universe that contradicts the theory that a universe compossible with life can arise (or indeed actually rose) from an “accident.” Just as “nothing comes from nothing,” the laws of nature cannot have been established via a random process. There is nothing implicit in the meaning of “random” that contains any motive spring for it to generate order, organization, higher complexity. It is simply “random”; i.e., it reflects no law in its behavior. The people who say that the universal evolution is nothing more than the effect of a process of matter in its motions and “pure, blind chance” — as Nobel laureate Jacques Monod claims — rely on the same reasoning that says, if life can be spontaneously generated from non-life, then similarly order can come from disorder.
Which is the same sort of problem, it seems to me, involved in all the multiverse and parallel universe and “panspermia” cosmologies one finds littering the landscape these days. The latter — panspermia theory — seems to be a particular favorite of atheists such as Francis Crick and Sir Fred Hoyle.
Panspermia theory holds that life on Earth was seeded here by space aliens. I gather anything that avoids the conclusion that the universe, and Life, is a divine creation, and thus has a spiritual dimension (which would include such things as intelligence, law, information, etc., all the “non-phenomenal” aspects that “tell” phenomena “what to do”) is what is being sought in such fanciful imaginings. Such theories seem ultimately designed to forbid anything that is immaterial from having causal impact in the universe. But if you say that, then where does physical law fit in, where mathematics, or logic, or intelligence, or information? Not to mention the evident universal constants? None of these are material entities.
But the fact regarding these exotic cosmologies is, not a one of them can be falsified, or subjected to replicable experiments. All these cosmologies are works of pure philosophical imagination dressed up in the language of scientific jargon.
However, that doesn’t mean the adherents of such imaginative speculations are bad scientists. Here’s Sir Fred Hoyle, a “non-Darwinian evolutionist,” contented atheist, and honest thinker:
No matter how large the environment one considers, life cannot have had a random beginning… there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (1020)2000 = 1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.… the enormous information content of even the simplest living systems… cannot in our view be generated by what are often called “natural” processes,… For life to have originated on the Earth it would be necessary that quite explicit instruction should have been provided for its assembly… There is no way in which we can expect to avoid the need for information, no way in which we can simply get by with a bigger and better organic soup, as we ourselves hoped might be possible a year or two ago.
Information is the key to life, just as it is the key to the fundamental structure and evolution of the universe, from the beginning. One conjectures the universe has the structure and dynamics it has because these were “programmed” in at the beginning. And this structure evidently was primed for life.
Again, this is what Genesis tells us: The Universe has an intelligent cause that is outside of space-time. Physics and biology acknowledge the necessity of information for the rise and maintenance of life, but assign no cause for this information within spatiotemporal reality. But if it cannot be found “there,” then where can it be found?
See Genesis. And consider this observation, from Albert Einstein:
“The natural law reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
Scientists recognize so well that the universe has fundamental structure that they are encouraged to propound “grand unified theories,” GUTs, or “Theories of Everything.” The standard model of physics today recognizes four fundamental forces in nature: the nuclear strong, the nuclear weak, electromagnetism, and gravity. So far, all have been conveniently “reconciled together,” or unified — except for gravity, which continues to resist being fitted into any kind of “grand unified” model thus far.
Regarding the four fundamental forces, here are some more interesting thoughts from Ian Stewart:
Other types of forces could in principle give rise to other types of universe, and our ignorance of such possibilities is almost total. It is often claimed that without the particular forces we have, life would be impossible, proving that our universe is amazingly fine-tuned to make life possible. This argument is bogus, a wild exaggeration based on too limited a view of what constitutes life. Life like ours would be impossible — but it is the height of arrogance to assume that our kind of life is the only kind of organized complexity that could exist. The fallacy here is to confuse sufficient conditions for life (those aspects of our universe on which our kind of life depends) with necessary ones.
It is interesting that here Stewart reduces life to the definition, “organized complexity.” The description appears to be general enough to encompass everything (everything material at least), yet at the same time, is useless to provide insight into the living nature of actual, particular living beings.
Be that as it may, it seems Stewart is working to a doctrine, to a particular world view, in giving his analysis. And he seems to recognize this in what follows:
The view that a Theory of Everything must exist brings to mind monotheist religion — in which, over the millennia, disparate collections of gods and goddesses with their own special domains have been replaced by one god whose domain is everything. This process is widely viewed as an advance, but it resembles a standard philosophical error known as “the equation of unknowns” in which the same cause is assigned to all mysterious phenomena…. “Explanations” like this give a false sense of progress — we used to have three mysteries to explain; now we have just one. But the one new mystery conflates three separate ones, which might well have entirely different explanations. By conflating them, we blind ourselves to this possibility.
When you explain the Sun by a sun-god and rain by a rain-god, you can endow each god with its own special features. But if you insist that both Sun and rain are controlled by the same god, then you may end up trying to force two different things into the same straightjacket. So in some ways fundamental physics is more like fundamentalist physics. Equations [brief enough to fit] on a T-shirt replace an immanent deity, and the unfolding of the consequences of those equations replaces divine intervention in daily life.
Despite these reservations, my heart is with the physical fundamentalists. I would like to see a Theory of Everything, and I would be delighted if it were mathematical, beautiful, and true. I think religious people might also approve, because they could interpret it as proof of the exquisite taste and intelligence of their deity.
Exactly so — that would be my takeaway!
To sum up, it appears that a model of the universe that stipulates that all that exists — life and non-life — is simply the product of random transformations of “matter in its motions” has been falsified by modern physics. To the extent that information — which presupposes intelligence — plays a role, we have to acknowledge that other, immaterial factors are at work. Which of course we do, to the extent we realize and acknowledge the universal existence of physical laws, of finely-tuned cosmic values, and of the symmetries in nature. To do so, we have to put a check on randomness as a possible explanation for the nature or structure of things.
But we cannot eliminate randomness altogether. In the final analysis, it seems to me the universe lives in the dynamic tension that obtains between that which is changeless (the symmetry), and that which is changeable (a symmetry-breaking event). Or as Leibniz put it, at the level of fundamental universal principles the universe must consist of something that does not ever change, and something that is capable of changing.
For example, consider the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The first is a conservation law — matter cannot be either created or destroyed — that is, matter is unchangeable; i.e., it is “symmetrical” under all known conditions. The second law “breaks the symmetry” of the first; and if it couldn’t do that, then probably nothing would ever happen in our universe.
The most amazing thing to me is that evidently, as a consequence of such a fundamental tension, we live in a “guided” universe, but not a wholly deterministic one.
And the Guide does not seem to reside in the system — at least, as far as science can tell.
Thus it seems to me if the Guide could construct a universe finely-tuned and primed for life on the most global scale — i.e., that of the whole universe — then it should be child’s play for this Source to prime and guide any living (or non-living) sub-unit of the universe — preeminently biological creatures; and of these, Man above all.
Given that the universe evidently has been left deliberately incompletely determined, or underdetermined (Planck’s constant reminds us of this), then not only the “free development” of nature has been left intact (subject only to the natural symmetries), but so also has human free will been left wholly intact.
Given the splendors of natural reality, and the uncanny facility that man has for exploring and understanding them, really all I can say is: I am on my knees in gratitude, thanks, and praise, and all glory be to God — in Whom we live and move and have our Being.
Paul was converted ~ the time Josephus was born. The books/letters of the New Testament were all completed prior to 97 AD and many of the people who were in the 'more than 500' whom Paul spoke of as eyewitnesses still alive when he was writing his letters were still alive when Jerusalem was razed in 70 AD.
Read my Bible? Sparky, you might want to read A Bible! Wouldn't hurt you to read a few histories of the New Testament times, too.
You pretend pretty well, but you are in the final analysis merely a poser, pretending to have depth of study and understanding that you haven't put the work into to actual possess.
A simply stunning insight, dearest sister in Christ!
Thank you ever so much for this magnificent essay/post!
How can it be said they don't? The "'evidence" in play does not seem to be dispositive either way....
AMEN! THANKS THANKS.
Some folks are disinclined to have their biases dinged or pinged.
Well put.
The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.
That's very nice.
But you still must realize that there is no scientific evidence for a global flood about 4,350 years ago.
The argument that comets may have had some effect about the same time as a purported worldwide flood is typical of what we see from creation "science." It totally ignores the mountains of evidence that the flood did not occur in favor of an idea, comets, for which there is scant evidence. It takes what is, only to creation "science," an anomaly and uses that to equal and in fact refute the mountains of evidence on the other side.
Sorry, real science doesn't work that way.
If you posit a global flood, you better start finding some evidence for flooding in some parts of the world at the specified time. In reality, a global flood would mean that there would be evidence in your back yard. An archaeologist or a sedimentologist could find it easily, if it was there.
Archaeologists and sedimentologists have been poking their noses into the earth everywhere, and there is no evidence for a global flood at the appointed time. Not surprising, as the idea of a global flood is a tribal myth.
There may have been some effects on advanced civilizations from comets or other celestial phenomena, but that does not equal a flood -- except to creation "scientists."
As for pings, please feel free to ping me to posts that have some science content (as this one has a specific claim). What I don't have time for is the lengthy metaphysical posts that are totally devoid of science content.
Beware the oysters, indeed!!!!
LOL, you know what a hot button "second realities" are for me, dearest sister in Christ! How could I resist?
Thank you for raising the issue!
A flood would not have to be global in the sense of global unundation.. All it would have to do is effect all the food chains negativly to blot out most life.. Which is "the spirit" of the biblical verses(creationists hold to).. the intent.. the end result..
Looking for flood lines in strata at every level would be quite silly.. overlooking the intent of the scripture and missing "the point".... only to make a reverse point.. in error..
So we have a flood that was not a flood, which destroyed civilizations but not populations, and took place over about a century or more instead of a year. How does this even vaguely resemble the biblical account?
A flood would not have to be global in the sense of global unundation.. All it would have to do is effect all the food chains negativly to blot out most life.. Which is "the spirit" of the biblical verses(creationists hold to).. the intent.. the end result..
You know the Bible better than I. So you (collectively) are backing off the claim of a global flood?
Where, then, did this formerly-global flood occur? And what evidence is there to support that claim.
Looking for flood lines in strata at every level would be quite silly.. overlooking the intent of the scripture and missing "the point".... only to make a reverse point.. in error..
Really?
Then the flood came upon the earth for forty days, and the water increased and lifted up the ark, so that it rose above the earth. The water prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. The water prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered. The water prevailed fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered.All flesh that moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind; of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died.
Thus He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, and they were blotted out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark.
Genesis 7:17-23
Looks pretty explicit to me. All the earth was covered, everything died, the only things left alive were the creatures on the Ark.
There is a human tendency to attribute to God’s action/fault natural disasters which God uses to further His designs. Just because a natural disaster is at the heart of the world-wide flood(s), does not mean God caused the natural disaster. And what occurred world-wide may have been focused upon as it effected the Middle East specifically, thus such flooding world-wide over a period of time would not necessarily have to be the focus of the specific cultures the Bible describes as 'wiped out'. To the writer of the Bible, the scribe not the author dictating, the focus would be 'the whole world' if the scribe had no knowledge of the rest of the globe.
One needs to choose paths carefully, where one states God uses catastrophe and other path which asserts that God causes catastrophes. Anti-religion agenda driven posters will twist our words to read 'God causes the catastrohes' when our post actually only assert that God uses these natural disasters because He knows they are coming. These same posters will accuse that God sends people to Hell, when in reality He has made a way to avoid Hell and it is the rejection of His gift that sends someone away form His presence.
I appreciate your point.
However, there’s ample Biblical example of God actually deliberately causing great disasters . . . Moses and Pharoah . . . for example.
And, at some point . . . it’s a bit moot if God allows reaping what’s been sown . . . the effect is essentially the same as if God arranged it independently on His own, imho.
Thx.
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