Bill Hamilton wrote:
>Glenn's argument -- that there are many amino acid sequences that will
>accomplish a given function -- seems to me to be consistent with a God who
>is described as merciful and provident and not a suppressor of secondary
>causes or the will of creatures, Who guards against "tipping His hand" to
>ensure unbelievers won't be forced to believe in Him.
>
>If, as Howard claims, God has "gifted" nature with properties which enable
>it to produce the phenomena He wants simply by commanding it(Howard will I
>hope forgive me for my very loose paraphrase of his view), it would seem
>logical to build a variety of means into nature by which His commands could
>be accomplished. From an engineering point of view, that's just robust
>design.
>
>When we take into account that God seems usually to prefer keeping his
>actions hidden from casual observation, this makes even more sense. By
>ensuring that the probabilities of desired outcomes are quite high, He can
>reduce the reordering He performs to undetectible levels. Again, from an
>engineering point of view, that's just elegant design: don't design
>something you have to force with a sledge hammer when you can make it work
>by issuing a simple command.
>
I agree with your theology here, that God hides himself somewhat
(only somewhat, not completely) and that he does so in order that
men can choose, if they wish, not to believe in him. This is, of
course, an important part of Pascal's theology, here are a few
of my favorite examples:
There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and
enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition.
<Pensees, from fragment 149>
If there were no obscurity man would not feel his corruption:
if there were no light man could not hope for a cure. Thus it
is not only right but useful for us that God should be partly
concealed and partly revealed, since it is equally dangerous
for man to know God without knowing his own wretchedness as
to know his wretchedness without knowing God.
<Pensees frag. 446>
God wishes to move the will rather than the mind. Perfect clarity
would help the mind and harm the will.
<Pensees frag. 234>
We have an incapacity for proving anything which no amount of
dogmatism can overcome. We have an idea of truth which no
amount of skepticism can overcome.
<Pensees, frag. 406>
[fragment numbers are from A.J. Krailsheimer's translation,
Penguin Classics, 1966]
So, while I agree with the theology, I think it is mis-applied in the
present situation. First, I think it destroys the tension between light
and darkness mentioned by Pascal above, making it too easy to disbelieve.
In his graciousness, God hides himself somewhat, making it possible for
men to disbelieve, but only with some effort. You mentioned Hebrews 11:6,
but we also have to deal with Romans 1:20. Those who choose to disbelieve
are without excuse.
Secondly, the view that life is a highly probable occurance doesn't seem
to jive too well with what is already known. I'm going to address the
probability argument itself in another post, so let me switch gears a
little here and discuss physics and cosmology. The fine tuning of physical
constants and initial & boundary conditions required for life is now
well established. Imagine a control panel with a number of different
dials symbolizing a variety of different physical constants and initial
conditions. At the beginning of time, the moment of the big bang,
these dials must all be set in certain positions. The precision of
these settings required if life is to occur is tremendous, surely
this is analogous to the sledge hammer that you mentioned. Herein
we find a suggestive glimmer of light, not a proof for the existence
of God, but rather a suggestion that requires some effort to avoid.
One can find ample evidence for this by just looking at the comments
of various physicists, here's one of my favorite examples:
This simple but powerful argument leads us to ask the question:
*how much* can I deduce about the universe from the fact that
I exist? It turns out that various elementary particle, nuclear,
atomic and molecular properties of matter have to be very finely
tuned for conditions in the universe to have permitted my
development--many examples are given by Barrow and Tipler and
elsewhere in this book. These finely tuned properties will
probably also eventually be accounted for by fundamental
theory. But why should fundamental theory _happen_ to lead
to these properties?
There seem to be three possible answers to this question:
(a) It is a complete chance.
(b) God regards me as such a desirable product of the universe
that he has fine-tuned it so as to guarantee my development.
(c) There exist other, disjoint, universes with other laws
and constants of nature.
-- D.W. Sciama, "The Anthropic Principle and the Non-Uniqueness
of the Universe," in _The Anthropic Principle_, Proceedings
of the Second Venice Conference on Cosmology and Philosophy,
F. Bertola and U. Curi, ed., Cambridge University Press,
1993, pp. 107-109.
My prediction is that if the mystery of the origin of life is ever solved,
the chemists and biologists will soon be talking like the physicists
and we'll have an abiogenetic anthropic principle in addition to
the cosmological one.
My views on this have been strongly influenced by an article by
Owen Gingerich. Here is an extract from this article relevant to
the idea I am trying to develop here:
Several years ago I participated in a remarkable conference
of theists and atheists in Dallas. One session considered the
origin of life, and a group of Christian biochemists argued
that the historical record was nonscientific since it was
impossible to perform scientific experiments on history.
Furthermore, they amassed considerable evidence that the
current scenarios of the chemical evolution of life were
untenable. One of the atheists aligned against them, Professor
Clifford Matthews from the University of Chicago, conceded that
their criticisms had considerable validity. Calling their book
on _The Mystery of Life's Origin_ brilliant, he summarized
their arguments with respect to the standard picture of chemical
evolution as saying, "(1) the evidence is weak, (2) the premises
are wrong, and (3) the whole thing is impossible."
I soon found myself in the somewhat anomalous position that to
me, the atheists' approach was much more interesting than the
theists'. That particular group of Christian biochemists had
concluded that ordinary science did not work in such a historical
situation, that is, with respect to the origin of life, and they
attempted to delineate an alternative "origin science" in which
the explicit guiding hand of God could make possible what was
otherwise beyond any probability. The reason I admired the atheist
biochemists so much was that they had not given up. They were
still proposing ingeneous avenues whereby catalytic effects in
the chemistry made the events far more likely. "Let us not flee
to a supernaturalistic explanation," they said, "let us not retreat
from the laboratory."
Now it might be that the chemistry of life's origins _is_ forever
beyond human comprehension, but I see no way to establish that
scientifically. Therefore it seems to me to be part of science
to keep trying, even if ultimately there is no accessible answer.
Am I contradicting myself to say, on the one hand, that the resonance
levels in carbon and oxygen point to a superintelligent design,
and on the other hand, that science must continue to search for
underlying reasons why the resonance levels are that way and not
some other way? I think not, for even if it is shown that those
levels had to be the way they are because of some fundamental,
invariable reason, there is still the miracle of design that led
it so, choice or not. Therefore, I see no reason that an appreciation
of the astonishing details of design should prevent us from trying
to search further into their underlying causes. Hence I am not
prepared to concede that arguments from design are necessarily
contrascientific in nature.
Perhaps part of Provine's outrage came because he was responding
to Phillip Johnson, professor of law at Berkeley, who is an
articulate legal champion of the right to believe in God as
Creator and Designer, and a critic of an evolutionary process
running entirely by chance. Earlier I mentioned the incredible
odds calculated by Lecomte du Nouy against the chance formation
of a protein molecule. Since we do have proteins, and since a
mechanistic science has been highly successful, the overwhelming
reaction has just been to ignore du Nouy, since he is so obviously
wrong. But is he? For science to overcome the odds, it is necessary
to for us to postulate catalysts and unknown pathways to make the
formation of life from inert matter enormously easier, and it is of
course precisely such pathways that are the challenge of science
to find. But is not the existence of such pathways also evidence
of design? And are they not inevitable? That is what materialists
such as Provine do not want to hear, but as Hoyle says, the numbers
one calculates put the matter beyond question.
So, while I differ from those Christian biochemists who postulate
some new kind of "origin science," I do think a science totally
devoid of the idea of design may be in danger of running into a
blank wall. And this brings me to ask again, is the idea of design
a threat to science? and I answer no, perhaps design might even be
a necessary ingredient in science.
-- Owen Gingerich, "Dare a Scientist Believe in Design,"
_Evidence of Purpose: Scientists Discover the Creator_,
J.M. Templeton, ed., Continuum, NY, 1994, pp. 30-31.
This is the type of suggestion (not proof) of design that I find very
appealing from a theological point of view, primarily because it
doesn't appeal to gap theology. If the gap remains, then the suggestion
of design persists. Filling the gap does not remove this suggestion
since the gap must be filled by finely tuned mechanisms.
==
Brian Harper:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=
"I believe there are 15,747,724,136,275,002,577,605,653,961,181,555,468,
044,717,914,527,116,709,366,231,425,076,185,631,031,296 protons in the
Universe and the same number of electrons." Arthur Stanley Eddington
:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=