Reconciling Faith and Science: Cosmology and the Origins of Life, Part 2

Along with the Big Bang I described in my previous post, another scientific method is gaining ground to help us understand the universe: the anthropic principle. It counters a widely held belief called the Copernican principle: the idea that the earth is nothing special in the larger scope of the universe. The implication is that if the earth is nothing unusual compared to everything else, then we are the product of a similar purposeless set of events that resulted in our eventual existence. The anthropic method has raised some serious doubts to this idea simply because of the number of constants required for our existence. The “weak” anthropic principle states that we should be able to observe conditions (expected and unusual) that are necessary for our existence. A few examples of these “fine-tuned” conditions are listed below:

1. If the initial explosion of the Big Bang had differed in strength by as little as 1 part in 10⁶⁰, the universe would have never expanded and collapsed upon itself, or expanded too rapidly for chemical processes to create our present universe. Life would have never begun.

2. Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force that holds an atom together had been stronger or weaker by as little as 5%, life would be not exist.

3 If gravity had been stronger or weaker by 1 part in 10⁴⁰, stars would not have formed. Coupled with the understanding that life requires favorable conditions created by the Sun, life may not have formed.

There are several others like these - I think about twenty in all. These conditions in and of themselves are significant barriers, However, if we calculate the likelihood of these constants all coming to rest in a state of equilibrium in our universe, the statistical probability becomes ridiculously staggering. Once again, science while answering some questions about life, is perfectly capable of opening a can of worms in the process as well.

Other options exist for the origin of the universe other than a single point of origin:

Multiverse – This theory explains our existence by expanding the number of possible universes that exist in order for life to occur without causative agency. Rather than account for the statistical possibilities within one universe, this theory states that there are an infinite number of universes in which abiogenesis could occur. We live in the universe where it did. Therefore, we are able to see the conditions for our arrival. In other words, rather than having a billion trillion acts on one stage, multiverse entertains the idea of having just a few acts occurring on a trillion stages. The stage/universe upon which we exist obtained the statistical probability necessary for our existence.

Panspermia – Panspermia is the belief that life in the universe exists before us and presently. Somehow, transference of life occurred in our universe either through the collision of non-living matter carrying life (asteroids for example) or direct intervention by extra-terrestrial life. In other words, our planet was “seeded” some other type of life organism, simple or complex. Obviously a couple of problems with this scenario come to mind. First, seeding by complex life would still require intentional causative agency and, secondly, simple life organisms have always existed. Panspermia does not explain where those life forms derived.

So which of these are easier to believe? Causative agency, an infinite number of dimensions, or extra-terrestrial seeding of our planet? There all about the same, actually. They are all beyond empirical verification. In other words, the jury is still out…and looks to be for a long time. Yet, that doesn’t stop anyone from choosing a multiverse explanation over a metaphysical being. That’s because we’ve been conditioned to believe we must make a choice between science and religion. Why? It makes us antsy to not have all the answers. That has nothing to do with science or religion. That has more to do with being human.

Reconciling Faith and Science: Cosmology and the Origins of Life, Part 1

This post and the next, I want to talk to you about the recent developments in our understanding of the origins of life. A lot has happened in this area over the past several decades and scientists are still hashing out the details, just like in other disciplines. Similar to biochemistry, the discoveries of the last several decades have not closed the “gap” for science to explain away God or anything similar to that. The opposite is the case – more discovery has conveyed more complexity and intricacies that we would otherwise assume didn’t matter. It was “out of sight, out of mind.” Our discoveries, while increasing our knowledge, have also made it very clear just how little we truly understand about our universe and origins. As such, to draw inferences assuming that we do have everything figured out is certainly premature.

Let’s look at a couple of examples (this post and next) of how things have changed and what they mean for people of faith.

 The Big Bang:

The “Big Bang”  theory (originally a derogatory term) came about through the work of two scientists in the 1920s – Lemaitre and Friedmann. They took Einstein/Hubble’s data about the universe expanding and made an obvious conclusion: if the universe is expanding, at sometime in the past, the distance between all matter in the universe must have been zero. Though the model made sense, I posted about all the attempts to produce another theory that didn’t have a “starting point.” Why? Because up until the Big Bang theory, cosmologists uniformly believed that there was no beginning or end to the universe. And all research endeavors to that point had been undertaken with that assumption firmly in place, once again denoting the “humanness” of science.  But when a beginning point became a possibility, it became entirely feasible to ask what produced this beginning. In 1965, scientists found evidence of the big bang: residual radiation coming from all directions at equal length. Called cosmic microwave background radiation, their discovery silenced most critics of the Big Bang theory.

So, why is this a big deal? Well, it points to a beginning. And that makes it some of the best news science has ever produced for those looking for reconciling science and faith. For strict young earth creationists, the Big Bang is often seen as the enemy. But for all other models (various forms of intelligent design or theistic evolution, for example), this is an example of the reaffirming/collaborative effort faith and science can bring to each other. Science is still dealing with understanding this. For example, in attempting to reconstruct the precise point of the universe’s inception, astrophysicists have been able to calculate backwards to a point about 10^-43 second from the zero point. At that point, their physics breaks down due to quantum’s uncertainly principle. Does this “prove” God exists. No…the only thing it “proves” is that we don’t know what happened beyond 10^-43 second. All inferences at this point become philosophical/religious.

Reconciling Faith and Science: Biochemistry

As we get into specific disciplines, I hope you’ll notice is just how much in science is still “open” and available for various interpretations. Many of those who embrace scientific naturalism assume the God must be jettisoned from the picture based on recent developments in science. But actually what we’ll see is that no scientific discipline has conclusive answers concerning the origins and design of anything as of right now. It’s these undetermined variables that should keep anyone from making religion and science exclusive of each other (as if they are mutually exclusive to begin with).

Biochemisty is the study of chemical processes in living things. It includes cells, proteins, enzymes, polymers, lipids, as well as genetics: DNA, RNA, and cellular membrane transport. We’re talking about the parts of life that are very small and very complex. For example, the simplest microbial life forms on earth require somewhere between 1,300 and 2,300 gene products in order to function. Now, be forwarned: the term “God in the gaps” is not the best choice – people have used this idea for centuries and once science discovers a natural cause for a “supernatural” event, people’s faith is shattered. For decades, the “gaps” were shrinking. But with the biochemical renaissance we’ve been in, the “gaps” have become huge. Science no longer simplifies the world – its discoveries are making the world more complex and less reducible to broad uniform theories. We’re no longer explaining the differences in lengths of finch beaks. Scientists are now dealing with the genetic transference in finches and its impact on the molecular composition of bird beaks – things beyond ordinary observation with the naked eye. So, classic Naturalism and religion have both painted with brush strokes that were too large for our present state of discovery.

Let me give you a couple of easy examples of life at a cellular level that make the point. Let’s start with E. coli:

E. coli is a normal inhabitant of our intestinal tract. It has been a favorite to study in science lab for over a century. In the past decade, scientists have particularly been interested in the evolutionary process of E. coli. It duplicates itself about seven times a day and has been grown continuously to thirty thousand generations (the equivalent of about one million human years). But E.coli has not consistently improved itself biologically, nor has it genetically enhanced its makeup. Left to its own devices, E. coli consistently throws away part of its foundational genetic code, specifically the part that makes RNA. Why it does this is what so interesting. The more sophisticated parts of the bacterium’s makeup are also the parts that consume the most energy. So, in an attempt to make itself more efficient, E. coli actually cripples its own ability to replicate. The behavior that random mutation produces in E. coli is positive – but it doesn’t evolve in the way we think it should. Actually, random mutation left to itself actually de-evolves the bacterium.

Next example - the HIV virus:

 Unlike E. coli, the HIV virus is much smaller and has a much greater mutation rate – so much so, that on average, each virus contains one mutation from its parent. So, every one is different. With its rapid mutation rate, every single-point mutation of the virus occurs in an infected individual up to 10⁵ times each day. Double-point mutations (where two amino acids have changed) occur in every AIDS patient at least once a day. In other words, every mutation the virus has ever wrought has occurred over and over for scientists to observe. Left to itself, the HIV virus should be an evolutionary juggernaut, but the opposite is actually the case. Though HIV develops immunity to various drugs (in an unsophisticated way similar to malaria), at the biochemical level, it has done very little. In fact there have been no significant biochemical changes in the virus at all. A hundred billion billion viruses later, biochemists state that the HIV virus binds to its host in the exact same way. Though biochemists have been able to identify better ways for the virus could bind to its host, HIV (left to its own devices under the auspices of random mutation) has not. Neither has it improved itself at a molecular level. No new structural changes or improvements. No gene duplication leading to new functions.

In both of these examples, we have millions of generations and trillions of organisms with little biochemical significance to show for it. So, the belief that an organism can improve its existence through random mutations at a cellular level is inconclusive. Does that prove the existence of an Intelligent Designer? No. That’s a philosophy question, not a science one. On the other hand, can a uniform theory of random mutation explain all improvements at a cellular level? No, particularly since examples like the two above show mutations maintaining the status quo of deteriorating the overall condition of an organism. To draw unquestioned assumption that random mutation always improves upon its predecessor is philosophy as well.

Reconciling Faith and Science: The “Humanness” of Science, Part 2

If you remember from my last post, we are attempting to see that our humanness affects everything we do. Science is a human endeavor and all humans bring their personal beliefs to bear on their work. Until we see that religion and science are human enterprises, then we are incapable of determining if they fit together or not. Last post we looked at historical examples: Kepler, Newton, etc. You may think that modern science (with the separation between faith and science fully pronounced) is much more objective. Actually, it’s gotten worse! 

For example, listen to some of the following quotes for or against evolutionary theory (emphasis mine). Now, remember – we aren’t talking about the issue of evolution per se; we’re talking about the human reactions (positive and negative) that evolution evokes from different scientists:

Lynn Margulis (University of Massachusetts) calls neo-Darwinists “a minor twentieth century religious sect…they wallow in their zoological, capitalistic, cost-benefit interpretation of Darwin…neo-Darwinism is in a complete funk.”

Biologist Ed Wilson (Harvard): “The final decisive edge enjoyed by scientific naturalism will come from its capacity to explain traditional religion…theology is not likely to survive…”

Late astrophysicist Robert Jastrow (NASA, Princeton): “At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance…and as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Biologist Francis Collins (Human Genome Project): “Admittedly we cannot precisely outline the order of the steps that lead to [biological organization]. We may never be able to do so, because the host organisms of many predecessors are lost to history. Yet Darwinism predicts that plausible intermediate steps must have existed, and some have indeed already been found.”

 Here are some modern examples of “humanness” in scientific experiments:

 By the late 1800s, physicists knew that light traveled as a wave, but didn’t know the medium through which it travelled. The greatest physicist of that time, James Clerk Maxwell stated that the answer was “ether”: “…there can be no doubt that…space is not empty but is occupied by [ether], which is certainly the largest and probably most uniform body of which we have knowledge.” Not only did Maxwell declare ether’s existence, he precisely calculated its density and coefficient of rigidity. But in 1887, Michelson and Morely conducted an experiment that showed that ether did not exist in space. For roughly 25 years, other scientists along with Maxwell had been calculating the density of something that didn’t exist.

 In 1952, University of Chicago’s Stanley Miller attempted to create the primordial environment from which the origins of life sprang. He combined the chemicals he believed to have been present at the beginning of life. With a little perseverance, Miller hoped to produce amino acids – the building blocks of life. And that’s exactly what he did – the scientific community rejoiced when Miller was able to detect various amino acids in his experiment. However, in hopes of producing them, Miller jiggled the apparatus around to create more interaction among the chemicals.

More examples next post…

New Evolutionary Discovery

I posted earlier this month that I’m reading a lot about science and faith. An article in the Wall Street Journal caught my attention this morning about a new fossil discovery. The article is here. If you read it, notice that there are already two “camps” of thought in regards as to the direction of common descent. Interesting stuff…

Reading and Listening…

Time for a book and music update. I haven’t found a ton of interesting music in the last few months or so. But here’s a few:

The Bird and the Bee, Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future.

Audioslave, Revelations.

Lo-pro, Self-titled.

I’ve mostly been reading for my Sunday school class, specifically in the area of science and faith. This has been a huge challenge for me intellectually and spiritually. I grew up in a conservative home that forcefully stood up for the belief in a literal Genesis and saw science and faith as contradictory. Now, I know there’s a lot more to the Genesis account than the literalness one finds in a car manual. I also know that the measurable half-lives of uranium, potassium, and stronium put the date of the earth at 4.5 billion years. I believe science and faith can be affirming of each other - though I’m not sure of all the details. I’ll let you know how all of that turns out after I’m done. Anyway, along with frequent cyber-visits to the Faraday Institute, here’s my list I’ve been reading – it’s an enormous hodge-podge of various positions. I don’t plan to immediately adopt one over the others after I finish them all (I’m about halfway through), but I do have a responsiblity to relay each position accurately to the congregation I serve. Ordered by topic:

Intelligent Design:

Gonzalez and Richards, The Privileged Planet

Owen Gingerich, God’s Universe

Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box

Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution

Fazale Rana, The Cell’s Design

Dembski and Ruse, eds., Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA

Creationism:

Grady McMurtry, Creation: Our Worldview

John Whitcomb, The World that Perished

Theistic Evolution:

Francis Collins, The Language of God

John Polkinghorne, Quantum Physics and Theology

John Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion

David Snoke, The Biblical Case for an Old Earth

Secular Evolution:

Johnjoe McFadden, Quantum Evolution

Brent Dalrymple, The Age of the Earth

Other:

John Haught, God and the New Atheism

Brian Appleyard, Understanding the Present: an Alternative History of Science

Anthony Flew, There Is a God

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the relationship between faith and science as I prepare to teach my class. Are science and faith enemies or friends?