Evolutionary morals

OK, so maybe very few people really believe in moral relativism.  After all, you can get to some pretty crazy conclusions from it.  So what do the majority of people believe about morals?  Besides those that adopt an absolute moral system (ie, from Christianity and other possibly transcendent sources), many people nowadays will adopt something I call evolutionary morals (for lack of a better term).

Those that claim this point of view will often say that this belief system is different from complete moral relativism, in that their morals are grounded in an objective system: the greater good of humanity.

The belief system goes like this (I think).  Humans evolved as a societal species.  We make relationships with each other, and we make social contracts, etc.  These things were selected for as we evolved. Therefore, evolution has preserved in us a natural tendency to do things that promote the good of the human race as a whole.

In this way, morals develop.  There are things that are definitely bad for the human race, as a whole, such as killing another human without justification.  That's why murder is wrong in almost all societies.  In fact, any moral can be defined this way: as long as it's good for society as a whole, then it's morally right.  Anything that's bad for society is morally wrong.  Thus, an absolute standard exists.

If anyone out there can explain this point of view better, or if you have one that's similar to this but there are important differences, please speak up.

Moral relativism part 3: cultural relativism

The flavor of moral relativism that I was talking about fairly recently had to do with one's own view of morality.  In this view, you chose your own reality, and whatever seemed good to you was indeed good (as long as you didn't hurt someone or impinge on their rights).  I think that's entirely absurd, and I believe many people agree with me.

But what about the claim that our culture defines our morality?

Cultural moral relativism goes like this: whatever we define, as a culture, to be good or bad, that's what's good or bad.  Furthermore, this argument is usually supported by the realization that most things we consider to be bad, as as culture, are things that hurt (and do not benefit) society.  For example, murder is considered bad by society because it's such a detriment to society that we deem it bad.

So cultural moral relativism seems to work for most people.  But does it make sense?

If morality is simply cultural, and there is no absolute standard of morality, then we have no way of judging other cultures.  In other words, on matters where the morality of two cultures differ, who's to say our culture's view of morality is preferred?  If there is another culture out there that has decided that burning women on the funeral pyre of their dead husbands is ok, then who are we to say that's wrong?  If culture decides what's good and bad, then their culture has decided that burning women is good.

What do we do then?

Here's another major issue.  If culture decides what's good or bad, then what room is there for cultural reform?  When women did not have the right to vote, who's to say that's wrong?  Why should I choose to believe that women should have the right to vote if I live in a culture where they don't?  If I did, I would be choosing to believe in something that culture deems morally wrong.

In the 1960's, during the civil rights movement, who is to say that blacks should be treated better?  If culture had already decided that it is ok to treat blacks poorly, how could someone say that's wrong?  As long as that's the cultural view, then isn't that by definition what's good?

OK, one more question.  How is it decided what's accepted culturally?  Do we put it to a vote?  Sometimes, we do.  Take Proposition 8 for example, voted on in California back in 2008, on whether it would be legal for same sex couples to be married.  In that vote, Proposition 8 was upheld, albeit barely, making it illegal for same sex couples to be married.  I knew a lot of people that were outraged by the fact that Prop 8 passed.  But why?  Why should we be angry about that when, as a culture, we decided by majority vote that it is "wrong" for same sex couples to marry?

A loving God

OK, forget about Christianity for a second.  I just wanted to get a poll from people, so please let me know what your thoughts are on this question.  If there were a perfectly loving God, one who loved you like you were his only child, one who loved you more than you could ever imagine being loved, would he demand that you give yourself to him?

Dissenting opinions

I love dissenting opinions.  What I don't love is people that get combative and adversarial, although we all do it.  I do it.  I know I've hurt people before by arguing too forcefully.  I am truly sorry for doing that to people.

But back to the main point: dissenting opinions.  I love dissenting opinions, especially when they're backed-up by good, sound reasoning, and most especially when the people who hold dissenting opinions can argue for them honestly and with as little bias as possible (or, at the very least, are able to admit their biases, cause we all have biases!).

The reason why I'm saying this is, I post blogs infrequently, and I usually sound off on one opinion or another of mine.  It's really easy for me to convince myself that I'm smart and I've got it all down when no one challenges me (thank you, Piper!).  So I am taking this opportunity to admit that I don't know for 100% sure that I am right.  I of course think I'm right.  (After all, if I didn't think I was right, if I thought I was wrong instead, then it wouldn't be an opinion I held and I certainly wouldn't be arguing for it.)  But I am trying not to be an arrogant know-it-all.  Sometimes, though, you have to get knocked off your horse.  Sometimes, you have to be challenged.  Otherwise, you may slip away from your well-intentioned blogging into irrational ranting and raving.  Otherwise, you may just puff yourself up.

No, I'm not doing this because someone actually did knock me off any horse.  This post was just a reality check for me, that's all.  It was on my heart.

Presumptions

Before I move on and discuss moral relativism at the cultural level, I briefly wanted to point out something that Michael Shermer (atheist, relativist, and editor of Skeptic's Magazine) said in a debate about moral relativism.  His take is that, even though there is no God, our morals are absolute, handed down to us by evolution.  I definitely disagree; if no God exists, evolution certainly can't hand down to us moral absolutes.

Anyway, in this debate, he and his opponent were discussing the rape example.  He said that the rape would be wrong no matter whether there is a God or not.  I thought that was interesting, because he was presuming there is no God.

He is claiming that there is something deep down inside of us such that we "know" that the rape is wrong. 

THEN he says it would be wrong whether or not there is a God.  Do you see the fallacy here?  His argument is entirely based on the fact that each of us knows it's wrong, so it must be wrong regardless of whether God exists.  What?  That is what's called circular reasoning folks.  Let me step you through the circle.

Presumption: there is no God.  Observation: we all feel that rape is immoral.  Therefore, some sort of moral absolutes exist inside us, even though there is no God.  Conclusion: you don't need God to explain moral absolutes.

Actually, what he's just proved is that you can convince yourself that moral absolutes can exist whether or not you believe in God, which of course has no bearing on the existence of God.

Moral relativism, part 2

Well, last time I wrote here I was talking about moral relativism, and I brought up the idea that you can do whatever you want, as long as you don't either (1) impinge on someone's freedom, and (2) hurt anyone.  I was trying to make the point that there are problems with (1), because freedom could be an absolute standard and because how do you know you "shouldn't" impinge on someone's freedom unless that is given from a higher standard?

But what about hurting someone?

Let's return to the example of the man who raped your little sister.  How do we know it's wrong?  There are two views to this.  First, if there are moral absolutes, then the rape itself is wrong.  No matter who I am, if you ask me if the rape is wrong, no matter what I answer, the rape is still wrong.  (In other words, I could say the rape isn't wrong, and I would be incorrect.)

On the other hand, if you're a relativist, then the rape is no longer wrong.  It is only up to the observer to choose whether it is right or wrong.  If you ask me if it was wrong, then I would say it's wrong, OR I could say it wasn't; in either case, I would be correct.  The rightness or wrongness of the action doesn't have to do with the action, it only has to do with whom your are asking.  No one has a privileged opinion.

Michael Shermer (a moral relativist and founder of Skeptic magazine) would say that we need to ask the girl whether the rape is wrong.  Ok, so let's ask the girl her opinion on whether the rape was wrong.  I have no doubt she'd say yes, it was wrong.  So does that settle it?  She says she was hurt, therefore the rape was wrong?

But if there are no moral absolutes, then again, no one has a privileged opinion.  In other words, we would be just as accurate to ask the rapist whether he thought the rape was wrong.  I'm not a criminal psychologist, but I get the feeling that he'd say it was wrong, too.  But let's just say for the sake of argument that he said it wasn't a wrong thing to do.  Now where do we stand?

Well, we could bring him to court, since the girl or her family would probably press charges.  Then it's up to the jury to decide (based on the evidence at hand) whether the rapist should be punished.  But again, if there are no moral absolutes, then no one has a privileged opinion.  Why should the jury be allowed to decide that it was wrong if we're supposed to be able to decide what is right and wrong for ourselves?  Sure, you could claim the guy hurt the girl, and that's why he should be punished, but what if he says she's lying and that he didn't hurt her?  And why in the world, if there are no moral absolutes, can we say you shouldn't hurt someone?

In summary, if you're a moral relativist, then metaphysically you have no power to stand in judgment over someone who has committed a crime.  The jury cannot decide, the judge cannot decide, the police cannot decide, and the family similarly has no moral highground to stand on to judge this man's actions.

The answer that most people give to this seeming absurdity is that, as a culture, we define our own morality.  So, sure, no moral absolutes exist, but for the good of mankind and the good of the culture, we have decided to enforce some rules, and one of them is you shouldn't rape someone.  That's why a jury of twelve peers should be able to make a decision on this: it's a sufficient cross-section of our society to come together and decide what our culture's point of view is on such a case.

But when you carry that to its logical end, even that doesn't make sense.  More on this later.

Moral relativism

From my last post, I laid out a brief description of postmodernism, as I understand it.  One of the outworkings of postmodernism is this view called moral relativism, which essentially says that no one has a privileged view of morality.  You should do what feels right to you, and that's what's right.

Well, that's clearly not true.   If it were, then what I think is right and what might feel good to me is to go on a shooting spree (as has been done recently and several times in the last couple of decades).  I don't think anyone would agree that the people who committed these terrible acts were well within their moral right.  So, that alone is easy to defeat.

But some would say that you can do whatever feels right to you, as long as you're not hurting others or impinging on their freedom.  OK, that's fine, but the questions I have then are, how do we know (1) what freedom is or what hurting someone else is, and (2) that upholding others' freedom and not hurting them are "good" things?  Those two points might be confusing, so I'll elaborate a bit further.  I'll talk about freedom first because I think it's easier.

In order to make a claim like "you can do whatever you feel is right as long as you don't impinge on someone else's freedom" (note italics), you have to have some absolute standard that tells you what freedom is and why you shouldn't take it away from someone.  Because how can you recognize that someone's freedom has been violated without knowing, inherently and subconsciously and conscience-ly, that such an abstract thing as "freedom" exists?  But most of us understand (or at least think we understand) what freedom is, even if we don't know where it comes from.  But even so, how do we know that freedom should be something that is good?  Maybe we can define freedom without an absolute standard (and that's a big maybe).  But what gives us the right to say that you shouldn't take it away from someone?  Do you see what I'm saying?  The very moral claim that says, "you can do whatever you want except take away someone else's freedom" is making an absolute moral claim regarding taking away someone else's freedom.  So even then, there are moral absolutes.

Here's another.  Justice.  Everyone longs for justice in their heart.  If your little sister got raped, there would be something burning within you, saying the person responsible must be punished.  But why?  If everything's relative, then how can you judge someone else's actions?  Well, most people would answer that the criminal hurt your little sister (to put it lightly).  And that's why there should be justice.  But there we have it again.  Where do we get this abstract standard of justice if no such absolute standard exists?  And even if we did somehow know what justice was, what standard of goodness is telling us that justice ought to be upheld?

Let's take it a step further.  Let's say the rapist went on trial for his actions and was jailed.  Then he could claim that the people jailing him were taking away his freedom, something they should not be allowed to do.  But you could answer, "that's what you get for hurting someone else."  That's justice.  But again, if everything's relative (with the exception being, for this example, that you can't take away someone's freedom), on what moral grounds can you stand while insisting justice be served?  If you have no moral grounds for justice (as the moral relativists say), then the rapist, as he is being jailed, could rightly say that his jailers should then be then jailed because they were taking away his freedom and thus deserve punishment as well.  But then the jailers of the jailers should be jailed, etc.

OK, so that seems absurd, but don't miss my point: if you follow moral relativism to its logical conclusion, then you end up somewhere absurd.  In other words, no one, not even the most die-hard moral relativist, really lives as if everything were relative.  We only appeal to it when it's convenient for us.  We only go to it when we want to justify our actions.  When it comes right down to it, search your heart of hearts: there must be a standard.  I can't even speak of these examples without inherently appealing to a standard.  Everywhere in this post where I said, "should" and "must be" and "ought," I am using the language of moral absolutes.  You can't even talk about these things without borrowing the capital of moral absolutism.

Ok, but then what about hurting someone?  Surely you can say that you shouldn't hurt someone, even in a relativistic world, right?  More on this later.

Postmodernism

I was answering an email question the other day that someone had about postmodernism.  It's an interesting thing, this philosophical (and now cultural) movement of postmodernism.  It's really just a pendulum swing away from what everyone thought in the early 1900's (a philosophical movement interestingly enough called "modernism").

Modernism is essentially scientific positivism.  It had to do with the idea that advances in science and technology would eventually cure all of the world's ills.  We would become advanced enough to the point that pain and suffering would no longer be a problem, and evil and sin would be overcome, just because we'd have enough knowledge to make it happen.

Well, sometime in the mid-1900's, people began to realize that was hogwash.  And that makes sense from the Christian worldview: man is both brilliant and despicable.  It's in our nature.  We're made in the image of God, tarnished by sin.  And that's what we are, so how could knowledge and science and technology erase that?

A quick tangent from my already worn-out tangent on modernism (remember the topic of this post is supposed to be postmodernism).  The Christian worldview is really the only worldview that makes perfect sense out of what has been called for ages "the enigma of man."  Many people (philosophers, writers, etc) down through the ages have wondered whether man was inherently good or evil, and there were brilliant people in both camps.  I think Jung was one of the bigger names in this struggle: he considered man to be "an enigma to himself."  But the Christian worldview really hits the nail on the head, that we are both made in the image of God and have made unto ourselves a sin nature.

Anyway, postmodernism was in part the violent reaction to the failure of modernism.  In postmodernism, nothing is for sure.  You can't know truth, you can't prove anything, you can't even know what I'm saying (because my true intent to tell you things may get lost in translation).  This got extended into two major cultural ideas: (1) there is no absolute truth, so whatever you want to believe is fine; I'll stick with my own beliefs, and (2) there is no absolute morality, so go with whatever "feels" good, and if you do something nice and self-sacrificial for someone else, it's just because it makes you feel good inside to do something nice.

Ugh.  OK, the first point is obviously false when you think about it.  If there is no absolute truth, then the statement "there is no absolute truth" is in and of itself, not absolutely true.  It's self-contradictory.  As a "scientist" (if I may call myself that), that statement makes no sense at all.  If there were no absolute truth, what's the point of empirical investigation (which is what science is)?

The second point (moral relativism) is a bit trickier.  I think it's one of the biggest challenges facing Christianity today (that and the problem of evil).  First of all, I don't believe it's true.  I think it's clear there are absolute moral imperatives.  I also think that if everyone was straight with themselves, they also would realize it's true.  I don't think anyone can really go about their lives as if moral absolutes didn't exist.  We all inherently and subconsciously act as if they did exist.  The problem for atheists and agnostics is, if moral absolutes do exist, then where do they come from?  More on this later.

Article on Titan's Atmosphere

The other day, I received an email from someone asking questions about a scientific discovery about Titan's atmosphere (a news release about this can be found here). In the discovery, scientists from U Ariz simulated conditions on Titan's atmosphere and found molecules that could be the precursors to life found in the reaction vessel!

What do I think about this discovery, from a Christian perspective? Did God create life, or did life arise naturalistically from non-living material on the early earth?

First of all, I think this discovery (which apparently has not been published yet in a peer-reviewed journal) should draw quite a bit of interest from both the origin of life community and, of course, organizations like RTB. To offer a brief critique of it, let me first start out by saying that the news article, as usual, appears to have grossly over-interpreted the conclusions that can be drawn from this study (as far as I can tell from only reading the scientific abstract, which is all that is currently available). That being said, I want to make the disclaimer that this study appears to be very good science, and I think it's really interesting and hope they do more on it. It's exciting research, and uncovering more about the universe and the conditions that may be necessary for life to form will help uncover the truth, which is always a good thing if you're a Christian.

So, a brief critique. First, note that the scientific results they are looking to publish are the result of a simulation of Titan's atmosphere. They took the small molecule gases that were found in Titan's atmosphere (CO, methane, and nitrogen), loaded them into a specialized chamber, and bombarded them with microwave radiation. What they found aggregated at the bottom of the chamber was a mix of lots of really complex molecules, including the five nucleobases used in DNA and RNA (those are, adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil and thymine) and the two simplest amino acids. That alone is amazing! But is that enough (or even close to enough) to lend support to the naturalistic origin of life?

I would say no, for two big, big reasons (and several small reasons).

First, there is either too much oxygen or not enough oxygen. What I mean is this. The article makes a point that there is enough oxygen in the atmosphere (in the from of CO) to promote the formation of the prebiotics, but not too much. You see, if there is too much oxygen in the atmosphere, the prebiotics will become over-oxidized and useless. However, because of the presence of UV radiation, the prebiotics are also destroyed: in the same way UV radiation damages your skin, UV radiation destroys the bonds of prebiotics. The only way to block the UV radiation is by an ozone layer. However, an ozone layer will not form in an oxygen deficient environment. In other words, too much oxygen, you get destruction of prebiotics, and too little oxygen and you get too much UV light, which destroys the prebiotics. The big problem is, there is no middle ground! The amount of oxygen necessary to form an adequate ozone layer far exceeds the level of oxygen where you get too much oxidation! (This is called the UV-oxygen paradox.) And notice that the researchers admit there is UV light in Titan's atmosphere, but in their simulations, they use microwave radiation (instead of UV radiation). I wonder what would have happened if they had used UV radiation in the same way that it is present on Titan's atmosphere?

Second, the article focuses on a few of the exciting molecules they formed, but it says nothing about the "toxic" molecules they also formed. What I mean by toxic is "detrimental to prebiotic chemistry". The goo they scraped off the bottom of the chamber undoubtedly also contained a series of other complex molecules, the presence of which would completely halt the formation of more complex biomolecules, such as proteins or RNA chains. Furthermore, they are still faced with the problem of homochirality (I may discuss this problem more at a future date).

You also have a multitude of other problems, such as a prohibitively small concentration of prebiotics falling into the ocean (if it's not concentrated enough, the prebiotics just won't ever "find" each other to make bonds), an alarmingly fast degradation rate of the prebiotics (most likely far outstripping the production rate from the atmosphere), the unknown mechanism to form bonds between prebiotics in the presence of water (because water inhibits these reactions), and the list goes on. For more about these problems, see where I quoted Dr Robert Shapiro here.

What if genomes of organisms didn't appear related?

In my opinion, one of the more compelling lines of evidence for evolution is that we can sequence the genomes of any living organism nowadays, and what we've found is a striking similarity among organisms. For example, and oft-quoted number is that the genomes of humans and chimpanzees are 99% similar. Pretty good evidence for common descent, is it not?

And by the way, this isn't exactly a new thing; it isn't just with the dawning of the post-genomic era that this line of evidence was put forth. There was a seminal study by I-forget-who back in I-forget-which-year where a graduate student was determining the primary sequence of some proteins in different organisms. She was attempting to show that these proteins were different in different organisms, and was dismayed to find that there was striking similarity. Her advisor being very wise (as advisors usually are), quickly saw the high-impact factor of such a find: this was concrete evidence for common descent!

Anyway, back to my main point. Is this similarity in genes and proteins and whole genomes compelling evidence for common descent? Or is there a way to explain it from a "God-created-it" standpoint? After all, if you're a creationist, you may not have to explain the mechanism by which genomes became related, but you do have to explain why God would do it that way.

One of the counter arguments is that God used a common design template when creating organisms, and only modified this template in small ways to account for the different purposes that He had for the different organisms. After all, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. In essence, this is arguing that God designs life in the same way that engineers design machines they build.

This argument doesn't really sit well with me. It's not that I don't think God would design life in the same way engineers design machines. To the contrary, I am convinced that He would, or perhaps more appropriately, we design machines in the same manner that God designs life. No, I am uncomfortable with this argument mostly because it's too hand waving. It doesn't have any real substance to it.

I prefer to put forth a counter argument from the basis of the question: What if God had done it another way? That is, what if genomes of organisms didn't appear related?

What do we care?

A couple of posts ago, I ended with the question "and what do we care?" This was in regard to whether and how much God has (supernaturally) intervened in the history of the universe to get the events to unfold according to His plan. For example, why in the end should we care whether God had to override the laws of physics to get the solar system to form where it is (ie, in the just-right location in the just-right galaxy) with the composition it has (ie, made of the just-right abundances of elements), etc, or whether the unfolding of the universe under the natural laws He set up at the beginning conspired to make this unlikely place form "naturally"?

I think this is certainly a good point to discuss. It isn't likely that we'll ever know how God did it. Although if we could show that the laws of physics were violated over and over, it would be a good apologetic. But philosophically, who can tell the difference between these two types of miraculous events? The formation of the moon was a miracle, in that it was highly unlikely. The advent of man was a miracle, in that it was an even less likely event. Do either violate the laws of physics? Even that's a difficult question to answer, as statistical thermodynamics, and even more so quantum mechanics, imply that anything can happen, even the most unlikely thing. It is within the laws of physics for all the air in the room you're sitting in to suddenly move to the other side of the room, instantly suffocating you. Its likelihood is on the order of 10^{-25} (or probably less), but it's not impossible. (I'll try to discuss this in a later post, because I'm not doing this justice here.)

Instead, I argue that the question we should be asking is therefore not whether the laws of physics are broken, but instead whether the unfolding of the history of the universe, including the history of life on planet earth, seems to bespeak the supernatural superintent of a creator, i.e., a mind. This is not just a question about probabilities. Rather, it is a question regarding whether the universe's history reflects the expressly-stated purposes of a creator. Sure, regarding evolution, we can try to go and test whether God specially intervened at points, but these would again be based on probability arguments. (For example, the likelihood that whales would evolve from a land mammal given their large body size, low fecundity, and long generation time, is extremely small.)

No, what I am arguing here is that the unfolding of history is following a divine plan. We live in a just right location at the just right time. The history of life on earth followed a just-right trajectory such that we could be here today. The evolution of stars and galaxies prior to the formation of our solar system occurred in a just-right way. In essence, these are all fine-tuning arguments, but they're subtly more than that, I think. It appears that the fine-tuning is no coincidence. It appears that it is following a plan.

And I think this argument demands to be developed further. For now, it's only in its infancy.

Humans and neanderthals interbreeding

Recently the report of possible interbreeding between humans and neanderthals has been a hot topic. As I understand it, a research team has compared their draft sequence of the neanderthal nuclear genome with the genomes of five modern (contemporary) humans. They found that there was more sequence similarity between neanderthals and three of the humans than with neanderthals and the other two. They concluded that this meant there was interbreeding.

This raised a host of questions, such as, are we all part neanderthal? If so, then is the image of God tarnished? This fits nicely into an old-earth creation model because (1) it shows that even though there may have been a small amount of interbreeding, humans and neanderthals are distinct species, thereby refuting the young-earth creationist model (that neanderthals were descendants of Adam and Eve), and (2) it shows humans did not evolve from neanderthals, further eroding the multi-regional hypothesis of human evolution (that ancient hominid species such as Homo erectus and neanderthals evolved together into the different races of modern humanity).

In fact, I have heard speculation that the humans and neanderthals interbreeding may be one way in which God could have used as a form of imposing racial diversity at the time of the Tower of Babel.

But there's one hypothesis that I haven't heard talked about: What if the interbreeding was only one-way? What if sinful human males had offspring with neanderthal females, but not the other way around? It would seem to fit the data just as well as the alternative, and perhaps even better. This scenario would definitively explain, for example, why there is no mitochondrial DNA evidence of humans and neanderthals interbreeding.

It also makes "social" sense. What I mean is, if we are all part neanderthal, that means at some time in the past, a half-human : half- neanderthal must have been raised by a human woman/family, and must have integrated into society somehow, and then passed on its genes via
a human partner. Then a 3/4-human : 1/4-neanderthal must have done the same thing, etc. Of course, as the neanderthal part gets diluted out, it becomes more imaginable. But even if a neanderthal male has offspring with a human female, and the mother does not want to "give
up" her baby, and raises it like a fully human child, what are the chances that the child would find a willing human partner to pass on the part-neanderthal genes? Just speculating here, of course. (In this day and age of political correctness, I almost feel like I'm being racist, but my arguments are actually speciesist...)

Why would God violate His own laws of physics (part 2)?

In my previous post, I introduced this topic and gave a very simple example why He would violate the laws of physics. In addition to that, we know that God did intervene in certain circumstances. For example, He intervened at the beginning of time. He intervened at the incarnation. Jesus (and the old testament prophets before Him) performed many miracles. I don't find this to be a good answer to Ken Miller's question, however, as God had specific purposes in history to perform miracles, and these acts of divine intervention were well-documented in the Bible. Thus, it does not answer generally about the history of the universe.

My next comment is that, in a way, I sympathize with Ken Miller and Francis Collins and other theistic evolutionists on on this point. When creationists argue that God must have intervened in specially creating life, including humans on the sixth day of creation, I wonder how that would be different from a special creation of the moon. We think we know in pretty good detail how the moon was formed, from a mechanistic, laws-of-physics standpoint. However, the fact that it happened is essentially a miracle. If the moon didn't exist in a very finely-tuned fashion, neither would we. In other words, if the moon hadn't formed in just the right way from just the right materials at just the right time in just the right place with just the right mass, advanced life would not have been possible on this planet. (I can't go into the details, as I do not know them. However, take my word for it that the formation of the moon is generally accepted to be a finely-tuned event, even among atheistic scientists. Also, I found a cool movie here about this, narrated by Captain Jean Luc Picard.) The chance that the moon would form in just this way is so small as to be essentially zero. But it can be explained in a very simple way: a Mars-sized body revolving around the sun about 4.4 billion years ago at the same revolution radius as the earth was suddenly kicked out of its stable orbit. It slowly got closer and closer to the earth until the two bodies collided at a low relative velocity and at a highly oblique angle. The laws of physics can completely explain it. But they do not explain why such an event, which must have been so finely-tuned, would have happened.

Applying this to life's history, Darwinian evolution is certainly a plausible mechanism to explain life's history, given the concession that life evolving this way (i.e., in just the right way to produce us) is extremely unlikely. However, I don't see anything in direct contradiction of the laws of physics, barring a second law of thermodynamics hand-waving argument. In other words, it isn't absurd to imagine that God supernaturally superintended each of life's events such that evolution according to the natural laws would occur just as He would have it. In the same way that it isn't absurd to imagine that God supernaturally superintended the formation of the moon just as He would have it such that we could later exist. He guided an extremely unlikely set of events to get us in the end. Did He do this by setting it up from the beginning and forgetting it (like a roticerie chicken machine)? Or did He have to perform "midcourse corrections'" such as NASA ground control often must do? And what do we care?

So, this discussion leads us logically to a point that I have discussed many times, about how all theistic evolutionists should also be proponents of intelligent design, and I won't repeat them here.

Why would God violate His own laws of physics?

I was listening to a lecture by Francis Collins recently. The specifics of his beliefs on God's direct creative intervention in history, whether it be in respect to the anthropic principle or the origin/evolution of life, were not that clear. (Perhaps this is a good thing; why be too dogmatic about an unimportant issue. Indeed, the answers to these questions may be something we never know until we ask Him ourselves.)

A few of the things he said, however, reminded me of something Ken Miller once said when I had the great opportunity to have a lunchtime discussion with him. He asked, "Why would God need to violate His own laws of physics to make things happen?" Meaning, if God is the author of the laws of physics, and the creator of the universe, certainly He had the ability to fine-tune the initial conditions of the universe (presumably at the moment of creation) in order to get everything to turn out as He wanted. Ken used this as an argument that evolution and theism are not in conflict; indeed, evolution makes even more sense than special creation in his opinion.

I have several comments about that. I'll talk about the first one here.

I can certainly imagine a hypothetical scenario in which God would need to violate the laws of physics and intervene in a very special way to make things happen. Imagine God wishes to fire a cannon and have the cannonball fly through a ring suspended in the air. (No, the ring being suspended is not the violation of the laws of physics; it could be hanging by a string or sitting on a post.) Simple. All He has to do is aim the cannon correctly, pack the right amount of gunpowder, and He can achieve His objective. (This is, of course, assuming the ring is not so high or so far away as to violate the physical constraints of the cannon. Assume, for this example, that it is an "infinitely powerful" cannon that can be aimed in any direction.)

Now imagine He also wishes to have the cannonball fly through another ring. No problem; it just constrains the parameters further. (In the case of only one ring, there are multiple ways to achieve this goal.)

Now, finally, there is a third ring He wants the cannonball to go through. Now we have a problem. What if the third ring doesn't lie along the parabolic path defined by the first two rings? (Actually, you can also think of a case in which He cannot even shoot the cannon through two rings. However, the illustration with three rings is easier to envision, and also helps lead the reader to the result, which is always the better teaching strategy.) For example, if the second ring is lower than the first ring, but the third ring is higher than the second, we are stuck. With God, however, nothing is impossible. He can simply "perform a miracle," i.e., break the laws of physics, to achieve His objectives.

OK, the illustration was silly and simplistic, but it shows that it is plausible, if not necessary, for God to have intervened in history to ensure the unfolding of events up until this point. This includes the formation of the galaxy, solar system, earth, moon, continents, etc., as well as the origin and history of life on this planet. It isn't entirely clear to me that any of this could have happened solely according to the laws of physics operating on the initial conditions of the universe at the singular cosmic creation event. Note that I have not proved that God intervened specially, I have only answered Ken Miller's question of "why." In other words, his asking that question and leaving it at that, as if that philosophically proves the case for the "fully-gifted creation" viewpoint, is not sufficient.

Francisco Ayala wins the Templeton Prize

A recent article in the LA Times reports on a local (UC Irvine) professor of biology, Francisco Ayala, winning the Templeton Prize. I think it's great that such a big prize in spirituality is being awarded to a scientist.

Although, I must say I don't agree very much with his philosophical views -- at least, with those espoused in this article. And of course who am I to address these things? Ayala is apparently an ordained priest. He's also a professor of biology, which is more than I can say about myself. (And between the two of us, who has won a Templeton Prize?)

So, he carries more clout than I do. But you can judge his points of view against mine regardless of our backgrounds (so that you avoid the ad hominem argument). For example, the article says, at one point:

Evolution "is consistent with a religious belief in God, whereas creationism and intelligent design are not." This, [Ayala] said, is because intelligent design suggests that the deformities of the world are God's design, whereas science shows them to be "a consequence of the clumsy ways of the evolutionary process."

I don't understand this. Even if evolution were clumsy, doesn't that also reflect in God, just as if He were the creator/designer? I guess this goes along "recent" posts of mine describing how even theistic evolutionists should, at some level, be proponents of intelligent design (note the lowercase letters).

The article then goes on to say:

"The Bible is a book about religious truths; it is not how the Earth was made," [Ayala] said. He added that he rejects the idea that one can read the Bible "as if it were an elementary textbook of biology or physics."

This is a common straw man against reading the bible literally and consistently with science. It doesn't have to be "as if it were an elementary textbook of [science]" in order to have some truths about the world and the way it was made. Indeed, if "the bible is a book about religious truths" (emphasis mine), then wouldn't it necessarily be about truths regarding origins? Because the origins of the universe, of the earth, of life, and yes, even of man, all have religious content.

For example, loooong before any of this became a scientific controversy, there was this little doctrine called creation ex nihilo (for an incomplete list of bible verses, see Gen 1:1, Heb 11:3, and 2 Tim 1:9 ). The earliest Christians believed that God created the universe out of nothing. That is, He did not use existing starting materials. That directly addresses the origins question, and is definitively from a religious point of view. So if the bible is about religious truth, and thus what is says about the origin of the universe is true, then at the very least it is consistent with our current understanding of the beginning of the universe (ie, the Big Bang). You can get all of this from the bible without treating it as an elementary science text. It comes directly out of theological commentaries.

A hiatus

Well, I've been gone from the blogosphere (or, as biologists may put it, the "blogome") since around Thanksgiving time, but I'll try to get things back up and running nowadays. Even at my best, I was an inconsistent blog poster, though...

Meeting Saturday, December 5th

Dear everyone who can make it,
We'll have our last meeting of 2009 this coming Saturday December 5th at my place at 11:45. We'll be talking about the mystery of human origins.

Saturday's gonna be a packed day. The Pasadena ticket office opens up early that day (7am) to sell Rose Bowl Game and BCS National Championship Game tickets (to Pasadena residents). After the meeting, the all-important SEC Championship Game begins, which is going to be interrupted by a wedding ceremony. I've also been told that UK is playing UNC in basketball, each team vying to reach the hallowed 2000 wins mark.

Hope to see everyone there.

Theistic evolution and intelligent design (part 5): Are we bold enough to test it?

In my last post, I drove home the point that intelligent design and theistic evolution, in the most generic sense of the two, should be welcome bedfellows. This is not to say that intelligent design of the kind that says "the bacterial flagellum is too complex and thus evolution cannot be true" should be wedded to theistic evolution; instead I am saying that evolution or no, God is sovereign, and He designed this universe and all life at some level.

However, if we accept that, we are denying what many people (in academia and elsewhere) equate with the theory of biological evolution: a naturalistic worldview. We should have no problem with the idea that all life on earth is related, but we should have a problem with the idea that, since we descended from an ape-like ancestor that also gave rise to chimpanzees (in common vernacular: we came from monkeys), we do not have inherent moral value. Or that we have the same moral value as chimpanzees. Or that we are different in degree only, not in kind. Folks, we were made in the image of God! Tarnished now, but that is true for no other creature (including the angels). And none other has the chance for redemption that we do.

What's more, as Christians we are in a unique position. We can affirm evolution, but we deny the naturalistic worldview. However, the proponent of naturalism (i.e., the atheist) must affirm evolution, because he/she denies the theistic worldview. (I hope I am not simplifying too much here, but I feel I am more or less correct.) And thus, the veracity of biological evolution carries too much weight; the atheist's worldview depends on it. And perhaps this is why evolution is considered sacred to biologists (as I mentioned in an earlier post).

I understand that most biologists would say that evolution has such high regard in biology because the entire field hinges upon it; it is the foundation for all biological research. I say hogwash to that. The field only hinges upon it if you have a naturalistic worldview.

Anyway, back to my main point. The naturalist's worldview hinges on the veracity of evolution. In contrast, the Christian worldview hinges on the veracity of the resurrection, and not on any "intelligent design" argument. We can go into the evidence for the resurrection later, but my point is that as Christians and as scientists (ok, some of us are scientists), we can take or leave biological evolution.

And so my question is: are we bold enough to test it?

Theistic evolution and intelligent design (part 4): "Will you marry me?"

Hearkening back to my original post in this series, I mentioned that I thought neither the "Theistic evolutionists" nor the proponents of the Intelligent Design Movement (IDM) have it right. I pointed out in part two that theistic evolutionists should, at their very heart, be proponents of intelligent design. In parts 3a and 3b, I spent most of the time talking about the IDM, but did mention that all Christians should be intelligent design (notice the lowercase letters) proponents of some sort.

Why can't then these two positions (theistic evolution and intelligent design) be married together in some way?

Sure, the natural mechanisms of biological evolution (that is, descent with modification, natural selection operating on variations caused by mutations) can promote diversification and speciation. But how does that detract from the fact that this universe and everything in it was part of the Designer's grand plan? Isaiah 45:18 says that God "did not create it [the earth] to be empty, / but formed it to be inhabited." It was God's plan in the beginning that earth should be filled with life. And if I may be so bold: human life was part of His plan as well. In other words, things may have evolved, but life was still designed.

Look at it this way. There are a lot of quotes from famous scientists that tread the edge of intelligent design, while at the same time vehemently denying it. For example, Francis Crick (in his book "What Mad Pursuit") says the following: "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." Uhm, excuse me, but why not both? No, seriously, one would correctly infer from this quote that biological entities, at the very least, appear designed. They do. The common evolutionist answer to that is the appearance of design is what we would expect given the mechanisms of evolution.

I have two things to say to that. First, how do we know? I think that's coming pretty close to putting the cart before the horse. Although I would tend to agree with that statement, I am still disgruntled that we take that at face value and don't test it.

Second, that statement (as well as the quote by Dr. Crick) relies on a false dichotomy. It's either designed, or it evolved. Theistic evolutionists and IDM proponents (and most people in general) play into that game, perhaps unknowningly. Most theistic evolutionists I know are uncomfortable with the idea that life is designed, even though I believe that's a natural consequence of their philosophical position. But we don't have to fall into that trap! Even though God may work through the natural laws and processes that He created, there is no reason to believe that life didn't evolve with a purpose, with a design!

In other words, I'm saying that if you're a Christian, and you believe that evolution correctly describes the history of life on earth and the diveristy of life we see today, you should still believe that it has been designed for the benefit of humanity. And that's just based on a philosophical/theological position. It doesn't even take into account the scientific evidence in favor of that position. (Perhaps I'll describe that evidence at a later date.)

Theistic evolution and intelligent design (part 3b): what is Intelligent Design?

Last time, I introduced the generic idea of intelligent design, contrasting it with the higly political Intelligent Design Movement (IDM). To be perfectly up front, I have problems with the IDM, mostly because they offer no testable/falsifiable hypotheses, yet they want their "theories" taught in high school biology courses. This is a no-no.

But what should the IDM do differently if it wants to get into the classroom? (As I said in my previous post, I personally have no problem with ideas of intelligent design being taught at the high-school level, but only if these ideas have been shown worthy of scientific merit.)

First, stop focusing so much negative evidence. At this point, you cannot overturn naturalistic evolution as an explanatory hypothesis by saying that it can't do something. I'm not saying that negative evidence never overturns hypotheses, but it won't overturn evolution. Evolution is not quantitative enough, and itself isn't testable/falsifiable enough to be challenged in this way. If the IDM wants to go up against evolution, it needs to show that it has more testable/falsifiable explanatory power than evolution does.

Here's an example. The bacterial flagellum (a whip-like structure attached to bacteria that allows them to swim) is an "icon" of intelligent design. The basic IDM argument is that the flagellum is so complex, there's no way that evolution can produce that. It's beyond the limits of what evolution can do. Evolutionists respond with, "no, that's not true, and we can imagine ways in which evolution can do this." Notice that neither of those assertions are actually testing anything; in essence they are just hand-waving arguments. It is extremely difficult to overthrow a scientific paradigm using hand-waving arguments, even if that's all that the other side is doing.

Second, the IDM really should try to move to another field (ie, besides biology/biochemistry). I don't know why, but for whatever reason, biological evolution is different from other scientific theories. Most disciplines (such as astronomy, physics, geology, chemistry, etc) tolerate or even welcome challenges to long-standing scientific theories. This is not true in biology; challenging the veracity of naturalistic evolution meets you with ridicule and disdain. Evolution is somewhat sacred to biologists, and to go up against it is sort of like going up against the premise that the bible can be trusted. Weird, but true. Perhaps this is a direct outgrowth from the whole "Scopes monkey trial" fiasco...and now anyone who disbelieves evolution is perceived as being either ignorant or brainwashed.

The other motivation IDM proponents should have in focusing on other scientific disciplines is that almost all other theories are infinitely more quantitative than biological evolution, and thus are also more testable/falsifiable. One problem with the theory of evolution is that we have no idea what the limits are to its explanatory power (if any). Because of this, we can attribute almost anything to evolution. (By the way, this is an interesting twist on the God-of-the-gaps fallacy, which I have written about several times.) In addition, using negative evidence to demonstrate that God created (ie, showing that naturalistic forces could not account for some phenomenon) is actually possible in a quantitative field, such as cosmology. In that case, the classical arguments coming from the IDM camp become less like hand-waving arguments and more like testable hypotheses.

Finally, the IDM should drop the facade about being religiously neutral. They see the past failures to get religious ideas taught in science classrooms (such as young-earth creation) as stemming from the religious content. So, IDM proponents make the claim that the movement is completely secular. They refuse to identify the intelligent Designer, and thus say that they have no religious affiliation. Note that this tactic is not working. No one in the scientific community buys that; most have linked the IDM to conservative Christianity, and rightly so in my opinion. After all, where else has the opposition to biological evolution come from? This has the unintended consequence of galvanizing the opposition to Christianity and has given intelligent design (note the lowercase letters) a bad name. At the beginning of my last post, I said that affirming "intelligent design" in the most generic sense should not subject one to ridicule. I didn't say does not. Now nearly any discussion about any kind of intelligent design links you to the IDM, which links you to a political agenda of anti-science and ignorance, which brings you ridicule. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but the IDM has given Christianity an uphill battle.

At any rate, the proponents of the IDM have had a fallacy in their political thinking. It wasn't actually the religious content of creationist ideas that blocked their introduction into science classrooms, it was the scientific merit. The rulings of the courts in the mid-to-late 20th century regarding the teaching of young earth creationism rested on academic merit, not religious content. Furthermore, if the IDM were following the "proper route" into classrooms, rather than try to force their way in via court rulings, there wouldn't be any issue anyway. Secularists and atheists might be upset about the fact that scientific theories promote a Designer, but what we would prefer shouldn't matter anyway. In summary, instead of trying to be fake and subversive in their agenda, why doesn't the IDM simply come clean? At this point, the IDM gives most people an untrustworthy vibe.

But there are some good things about the IDM. Some of their arguments, such as regarding the bacterial flagellum, I find to be intellectually compelling, just not scientifically defensible. (Notice a trend? I'm saying that a lot these days.) What Christians need are good scientific minds developing Christian apologetic arguments (or even better: research plans) that are both compelling and testable/falsifiable.

Theistic evolution and intelligent design (part 3a): what is Intelligent Design?

First of all, I have to apologize to everyone. I've been out of town for a week, and haven't been too frequent with my postings. Note that it took me about three weeks just to finish up a summary of our last meeting about the origin of life.

Now, where to begin when talking about Intelligent Design? First, we have to differentiate between intelligent design and the Intelligent Design Movement.

To me, the words "intelligent design" simply mean that a supernatural, causal, intelligent agent created this universe, and perhaps has a hand on the unfolding of history. This is seemingly uncontroversial, as most Christians should agree with this, and most anyone who truly believes in God likely does as well. In addition, even most atheists respect the fact that many people believe in God, and thus do not find fault with belief in an intelligent agent. In other words, believing in "intelligent design" in the most generic sense should not be a big deal, nor should it subject you to ridicule.

The "Intelligent Design Movement" (IDM) on the other hand is a completely different animal. This appears to be a group of people (mostly scientists, I suppose; the most prominent of whom is Dr. Michael Behe, professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University) that has a political agenda. Maybe that's going a bit too far, but it does explain why intelligent design has faced major opposition. Simply put, the IDM wants to force the teaching of creationism in high school biology classes.

I have no problem with that. Except for the fact that the ideas of the IDM are not scientifically defensible. At this point. A commenter from my last post asked me what I meant by "scientifically defensible". This was in response to my saying a couple times that my discussion of the origin of life was intellectually compelling but not scientifically defensible (see here and here), and I likened that to the IDM.

So here's what I meant. The hypotheses held by the IDM are mostly negative explanations regarding the veracity of biological evolution. They offer no way to test their hypotheses, and thus it boils down to "some biological features found in nature look so complex, there's no way naturalistic evolution could have resulted in that; it must have been God creating it." They offer no counter explanations that can be tested, and thus, it is quite difficult to publish in peer-reviewed, scientific journals (much less overthrow a scientific paradigm) if you have no hope of testing/falsifying your hypotheses. In summary, they don't offer an alternative model!

And here's the kicker. If you can't publish in the peer-reviewed scientific journals, then you cannot get into high school curricula. The proper way to make your way into the textbooks is to publish in the peer-reviewed journals, then get into cutting-edge graduate level classes, and then finally trickle down through the undergraduate levels to the high school level. The IDM is trying to circumnavigate this whole process and make their way straight into high school biology classrooms. That's not how science is done. They're playing at politics, and they're losing. What's worse, they're losing for the rest of us (more on this later). Scientific theories must be peer-reviewed, must be testable/falsifiable, and must stand the test of time.

This post is getting quite long, so I'll stop here. Next time, I'll go into more detail about what the IDM proponents should do to be taken seriously.

Summary of meeting on 10/24 (part 6)

I'm going to try to finish up the summary of our last meeting here in this post, because the excessive number of sub-parts is getting kind of ridiculous.

I still have one more point to cover here: are there chemical pathways, relevant to the conditions on the early earth, by which life's precursor molecules could have been made? If so, we should be able to deduce these pathways through conducting laboratory experiments.

So, what is the current state of biochemical pathways pertaining to the origin of life? Let's start with a history lesson. Most biology textbooks these days discuss seminal work by Stanley Miller in the 1950's (called the Miller-Urey experiment) in which he bubbled water vapor into a chamber filled with ammonia and methane (hydrogen-rich gases thought to comprise the primordial atmosphere). After simulating lightning with electric discharges for a long period of time, he found that some simple amino acids had formed in the reaction chamber! Subsequently, the origin of life research community had great optimism that the solution to the origin of life problem was just around the corner.

Fast forward 50+ years to today. Now we know the primordial atmosphere did not have the composition that Miller thought it to have. (Instead of reducing gases, such as ammonia and methane -- which have lots of hydrogen atoms -- it contained oxidizing gases, such as carbon dioxide and oxygen.) Most origin of life researchers today consider the Miller-Urey experiment to be irrelevant to the origin of life.

Most scientists today consider something called the "RNA world hypothesis" to be central to the origin of life question. Today, we live in a DNA-protein world, where DNA stores genetic information, and proteins catalyze the biochemical reactions. It would be difficult to envision that life could originate that way, since you would have to get two extremely rare events happening simultaneously: the chemical origins of DNA and of proteins. On the other hand, RNA can fulfill both roles, albeit slightly less efficiently. RNA can store information in the same way DNA can (but is less stable), and some RNA molecules can catalyze reactions similar to what proteins do (but not as well). So if the first life-form was RNA-based, instead of DNA/protein-based, then this would eliminate a major barrier to the likelihood that life arose naturalistically. Later, DNA and proteins could have slowly replaced RNA in its roles as information carrier and reaction catalyst. (This replacement would have been more or less permanent because DNA and proteins are better at their respective jobs than the RNA was.)

Now the question comes down to identifying a reasonable way in which RNA could have formed on the early earth. However, efforts to do this have been met with uninspiring results. In 2002, at an origin of life conference, here is how one leading origin of life researcher (Leslie Orgel) put it: "It would be a miracle if a strand of RNA ever appeared on the early Earth."

However, perhaps he was too quick to pronounce the miraculous-seeming nature of life's origin. Research published this year on the synthesis of nucleotides (the building blocks of RNA) demonstrated that perhaps it would be less-than-miraculous if a strand of RNA appeared on early Earth. On the other hand, some in the scientific community are skeptical. Leading origin of life researcher Robert Shapiro (and by the way, if I had to identify the three leading origin of life researchers of the 20th century, I would have said Miller, Orgel, and Shapiro) had this to say of the recent work: "The flaw with this kind of research is not in the chemistry. The flaw is in the logic -- that this experimental control by researchers in a modern laboratory could have been available on the early Earth."

In other words, even our best efforts to determine the chemical pathways to life's precursors suffer from one thing: the hallmarks of intelligent design.

Ugh. My entire summary suffered from the hallmark of intelligent design. Like I've said in previous posts, we don't want to construct an argument from a negative point of view, saying, "Look how crazy-complex this is...it must have been an intelligent designer." However, I do find these arguments regarding the origin of life to be intellectually compelling, just not scientifically defensible.

Until next time...

Summary of meeting on 10/24 (part 5!!)

I'm really sorry to have dragged this summary out like this. There's just so much to talk about!

Back to our discussion of the origin of life: one of the main predictions (or, more like expectations) of our naturalistic scenario is that the first life was initially simple, and only later evolved to become complex. This was expectation was seemingly borne out in the early days of microbiology: the simplest known life forms at that time, bacteria, when viewed under the microscope seemed to simply be "bags" of jelly, with very little structure or organization. If these life forms are really that simple, there is a possibility that the earth's first life was also that simple, or perhaps even simpler. This would fit well into a naturalistic paradigm.

On the other hand, as we have grown to understand microbiology more, we now realize that the internal and surface structure and organization of prokaryotes such as bacteria are incredibly complex; it's just that this organization couldn't be seen under a simple light microscope. By itself, this doesn't rule out the possibility that the first life was simple. However, further research into the minimum complexity of life has shown that even the simplest life form possible, which could not exist/thrive without constant TLC from intelligent agents (ie, laboratory scientists), requires at minimum roughly 200 genes. That's 200 different sets of instructions to build 200 different complex molecules. If that is indeed life's minimum complexity, then the first life form must have had at least 200 genes. That indeed is an uncomfortable fit into a naturalistic scenario.

Further geobiochemical evidence has supported the notion that earth's first life was complex. As far back as 3.5 billion years ago, an evolutionary instant after the end of the late heavy bombardment (see my previous post), we have evidence of entire ecosystems of microbes in symbiotic relationships.

In addition to that, very early on -- and I must confess, I am not sure about the published date for this -- we have photosynthetic life on earth. Why is that important? The biochemical machinery required to have photosynthesis is quite complex; not something you would expect from the earliest, most simple life forms posited by naturalistic models.

I just realized something. This blog post is supposed to be a summary of the meeting we had two Saturdays ago, but I just rambled on about something we didn't actually talk about. I guess it's bonus material.

And please, if you guys have any comments or questions, criticisms, I welcome them.

Summary of meeting on 10/24 (part 4)

Last time I left you with the cliffhanger that the oldest rocks known to man show the chemical signatures of life, rather than non-life. In other words, as far back as we can study geological formations, life has been here. Let me put this in perspective.

After the earth was formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago, it was unfit for life (or formless and empty). There were many impactor events that would have melted the earth's crust and vaporized all of its water in this early, "hadaean" period, which lasted from the time of earth's formation until roughly 3.9-3.8 billion years ago. The end of this era was particularly harsh, and was called the "late heavy bombardment", when the intensity and frequency of these impactor events were quite high.

These events are planet-sterilizing, so any life that could have existed was snuffed out. (Interestingly enough, there is recent research that argues that some life, if it existed, may have survived. However, this conclusion is controversial at this point. We'll have to see how that theory shakes out over then next year or so.) In addition to destroying all life, these impactors also melted all of the rocks, such that the oldest known rocks on the planet today (which are in Greenland I believe) date to the end of the late heavy bombardment, roughly 3.85 billion years ago.

In these rocks, the carbonaceous materials that we can find all bear the signature of life! In other words, the oldest known rocks date from a period that is also the earliest possible moment that the earth was habitable, and yet they show signs that life existed then! Not only was there no prebiotic soup (see my previous post), but life arose essentially instantaneously.

Wow. OK, next time we'll get to the third point I brought up in my last post: the initial complexity of life.

Summary of meeting last Saturday (part 3)

As I left it last time, the origin of life is hard! (It kind of reminds me of this "the onion" article.) But what exactly is the current state of origin of life research?

Oh, and here's a disclaimer for you all: this post is going to look a lot like a negative argument against the naturalistic paradigm, and also a lot like the God of the Gaps fallacy. If you have a problem with that, well, so do I. But as I said earlier, I still find the argument somewhat compelling, just not scientifically publishable. (See part 1 of this series of posts.)

There are four crucial parts of a naturalistic scenario for the origin of life that we currently lack evidence for. First, life must arise from a "primordial soup", or a concentrated solution of biological precursor molecules. Second, life must arise gradually over many, many years. Third, life must initially be very simple (whatever that means), only later evolving to be complex. And fourth, life must arise from identifiable biochemical reaction pathways that can be deduced from laboratory experiments.

The primordial soup, or prebiotic soup as some would call it, was a hypothesized aqueous mixture of all the biochemical molecules necessary to form life. I am not sure who first proposed this idea, but I am certain that it was a hypothetical construct for which we never had an evidence, yet somehow was made to be as fact in popular literature (see for example the series finale of "Star Trek TNG") and in textbooks. Darwin talks about it in a letter he wrote to a colleague in 1871:

...[W]e could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, heat, light, electricity, etc. present, that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes...

And so the primordial soup was just some "warm little pond", or ocean, with a bunch of the necessary life chemicals in it, such as sugars, amino acids, and nucleobases (the molecules that give DNA sequences their identity; the A's, G's, C's, and T's).

Well, it turns out that not only do we still have no evidence for a prebiotic soup, but we actually have evidence against there ever existing such a hypothetical mixture. I must confess that I don't know a ton about the science behind these observations, but the chemical signatures from the oldest known rocks show evidence of life, rather than non-life processes (such as prebiotic chemistry). This leads us directly into the second point: how long did it take for life to arise?

Oh boy, I didn't realize how long this post was going to get. We'll have to save discussion of the other this and the other two topics for later.

Until then.

Summary of meeting last Saturday (part 2)

One of the things I like to do, in order to impress upon people the legitimacy of some of the claims I make, is to quote non-theistic scientists. This time, Paul Davies, an agnostic theoretical physicist (who incidentally is quite interested in asking life's big questions) provides two powerful quotes regarding the origin of life. Both are from his book, "The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life":

When I set out to write this book, I was convinced that science was close to wrapping up the mystery of life's origin...Having spend a year or two researching the field, I am now of the opinion that there remains a huge gulf in our understanding...This gulf's not merely ignorance about certain technical details, it is a major conceptual lacuna.

He goes on to say:

Many investigators feel uneasy about stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they freely admit that they are baffled. There are two reasons for their unease. First they feel it opens the door to religious fundamentalists...Second, they worry that a frank admission of ignorance will undermine funding...

So, the moral of the story (for now) is that the origin of life is hard.

Summary of meeting last Saturday (part 1)

Last Saturday, we had another discussion meeting, this time about the origin of life.

Ugh. This topic is really tricky, because, when discussing it, you get really close to the God of the Gaps fallacy. We spent some time discussing this fallacy, mostly in regards to the Intelligent Design Movement (which I will be posting about in the near future). In summary, the God of the Gaps fallacy is when you say fill in the gaps in our knowledge with god.

An example commonly-used by opponents of theism is that, thousands of years ago, people supposedly thought that bolts of lightning were thrown by the gods. Now we know that it is the electric discharge that occurs after a large potential difference builds between two clouds (or a cloud and the ground).

In relation to the origin of life, the God of the Gaps fallacy works like this: Scientists have no idea how life could have originated by strictly naturalistic means. In fact, by our current knowledge, it basically looks impossible. Therefore, since science can't explain it, it must have been a miracle performed by God.

In a way, I actually find that argument somewhat convincing. My reasoning is that the scientific evidence actually shows that the probability of life originating naturalistically is so remote that it would never happen even in a mole of universes (that is, 10^23 universes). But again, this is negative evidence, and I don't think the field is quantitative enough at this point to rule things out by negative evidence. So, based solely on this argument, I would say that denying a naturalistic origin of life is intellectually satisfying to me, but not scientifically defensible. In other words, I find that argument compelling, but I don't think it is ready to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, much less stand the rigor of getting into high school textbooks (as many are trying to do).

More to come later...

Meeting this Saturday

We're having another discussion meeting at my place this coming Saturday (Oct 24th) at 11am. We'll be talking about the origin of life, and how the current scientific understanding provides evidence for a creator.

See you then.

Theistic evolution and intelligent design (part 2): what is theistic evolution?

Last time I rambled about this topic, I remarked on an article describing the Catholic position on cosmic and biological evolution. At the end of that post, I said that neither Theistic evolutionists nor Intelligent design proponents have it right, and that I would have to go into deeper detail about exactly what "Theistic evolution" and "intelligent design" mean, in this context.

In this post, I'll talk about what seems to me to be the most commonly held aspects of theistic evolution. Although, I admit that these may not in fact be the most commonly held, but only appear to be that way because they are held by the loudest proponents.

In summary, it seems that theistic evolutionists are only a step away from deistic evolutionists. Deism, in contrast to theism, is the view that a god or gods created the universe, but sits back and watches as everything unfolds, with little or no participation or intervention. Most theistic evolutionists would adamantly claim that this is not their stance...adopting such a stance would deny the deity of Christ, for example. But it seems proponents of theistic evolution are uncomfortable with the idea that God had a hand in any sort of physical, chemical, or biological process perhaps up until the time of Abraham, and maybe even after. (Again, they would not deny that God specially sought after a relationship with humans.)

Here's an example: a quote from Ken Miller, a quite famous theistic evolutionist and professor of biology at Brown University (and author of "Finding Darwin's God" and "Only a Theory"). He said, "Why would God have to break the laws of physics that He created?" In other words, if God directly intervened in the history of the universe for creation purposes, that would go outside the laws of physics. But God is the author of the laws of physics. Why couldn't He have just set everything up at the beginning so everything would play out as he wanted it?

There is more to this story, though. Miller's stance in his second book, "Only a Theory", is that a creationist God, who intervenes over the course of history, specifically in creating new life forms throughout the history of the earth, would be a bumbling, mistake-prone God. Consider all of the plant and animal species that have gone extinct over the last 500+ million years. It would seem like a creationist, intervening God just couldn't get it right.

I don't see how adopting a near-deistic point of view saves you from this precipice, though. Theistic evolutionists, as far as I can tell, still affirm the sovereignty of God, it's just that His plan was enacted from the get go and required little-to-no "midcourse corrections", as it were. In that case, given all of the life that has arisen and gone extinct, wouldn't a theistic evolutionary God also seem to be not "getting it right?"

So here's the beef I have with theistic evolution. I would argue that a theistic evolutionary point of view may be scientifically tenable, but it's full of philosophical loopholes. If we dig really deep into its philosophical tenets, we find that either we believe that human existence is an evolutionary accident (thereby denying the sovereignty of God), or it is part of God's initial, divine, cosmic plan. If we take the second to be true, and follow it to its logical, philosophical conclusions, then every life form that lived and died on this planet was part of a grand design by the cosmic Designer Himself. This further implies that life was indeed designed, a position that every proponent of theistic evolution would be uncomfortable with (at least, upon inference from hearing many theistic evolutionists speak).

So, what's the deal?

Thinking clearly (part 2a)

One thing I forgot to mention is what to do when you're confronted by someone who is using a red herring argument, or some other logical fallacy (such as ad hominem or straw man). One thing you definitely should not say is, "Don't you know that your response to my argument is irrelevant?!?" I know this is tempting, especially if you are in a heated debate with someone.

Instead, you should respond with patience and grace, yet not giving in to the other side. (Kind of like turning the other cheek). Say something like, "I appreciate (or even agree with) your argument, however I would like to point out that it does not directly address my points." And then politely explain why, and then say something like, "I am still waiting for an answer to my argument."