(16 votes, average: 4.69 out of 5)
Loading...Does the reality of “life” (living creatures) require “intelligent design” (since life cannot emerge from non-life)? Some random thoughts of a complete non-expert in any of the requisite fields: chemistry, biology, statistics, and, well, others. But I’d be interested in your thoughts.
I’m reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, 2.0. I had read the first edition that came out in 2003 and was mesmerized by it. This one is even better. He’s a genius at taking something complicated and explaining it in terms that even science neanderthals like me can understand (I’ve loved everything of his I’ve read, I A Walk in the Woods, which is hilarious, Home, and The Body).
One chapter in Short History is on the “The Rise of Life” (how life came out of non-life). The science shows how incredibly unlikely it is for life to have emerged on the planet, given what it takes not just to generate amino acids but even more to get them to form proteins, etc. etc. But not impossible. In fact,
Get access to Dr. Ehrman's library of 4,000+ articles plus five new articles per week about the New Testament and early Christianity. It costs as little as $2.99/mth and every cent goes to charity!
Unlock 4,000+ Articles Like This!
Cumulative probability. Each “attempt” may be a very low probability, but time gives us the opportunity for many, many events. Time and many trials make the unlikely likely. An example: If the probability of “success” (whatever that is) in a single trial is 0.000001, then with 1,000,000 trials the probability of success becomes 0.63.
You took the words right out of my mouth. But it’s not just cumulative probability. It’s cumulative small step adaptation as well. Life did not begin as the life we know today but would have been various stages of proto-life. Much as Homo sapiens did not spring full blown from some proto-simian ancestor in the Miocene but evolved by small adaptive steps over many millions of years.
In engineering terms, 2 plus 2 equals 5 for very large values 2 and very small values of 5.
Dear Dr Ehrman-This is a slightly meandering question, and so I apologise in advance. I recently came across the claim made by Markus Vinzent that our earliest attestation of the large scale reception of Paul’s letters can be traced to at most the middle 2nd century AD, roughly at the time of Marcion’s rise.
As such prior to this time Paul’s influence was negligible at best, as attested to by the absence of Pauline quotations in the writings of Justin Martyr. Furthermore those texts expressing a positive view of Paul, such as 1st Clement and Ignatius letters, are deemed to be in fact far later texts.
If I may ask my two central questions, what is your opinion of these ideas, and what are your views on the time when 1st Clement was written? Once again, I am sorry for this rather rambling message.
Not rambling at all — very clear and important. I don’t think Markus can make a compelling case and to my knowledge he hasn’t convinced very many experts in the field (none that I’ve heard of or talked to anyway.) I think 1 Clement is almost certaily in the mid-90s and Ignatius has to be somewhere around 110 CE. It’s not convincing to appeal to Justin about Paul, since a lot of scholars think Justin isn’t quoting Paul precisely because he was so widley used by Marcion. If you want a solid book on the use of Paul in the second century, less “sensational” and very well grounded, see Benjamin White, Remembering Paul.
Hair and Skin are good, but other than that there does not seem to be any intelligence in design.
Theses talk.origins links are but a small fraction of the posts pointing out how poorly designed the human body is.
Unintelligent design.
https://youtu.be/nHUz0d_LlQ8?si=i8nhVpBlWpGh4iKN
Jury-Rigged Design
https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/jury-rigged.html
Index to Creationist Claims
https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/index.html
https://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
Talk.origins FAQ
https://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html
Dear Dr Ehrman- Thank you very much for your reply. Regarding Dr Vinzent, may I ask you opinion of his view that the idea of the Resurrection has little to no influence upon the early christian communities prior to the rise of Marcion? Does this view have any broad support in biblical academia, and if not, why ?
Completely and demonstrably wrong. It’s a key belief in all our earliest sources, well before Marcion.
While it’s acknowledged that the overwhelming majority of environments in the universe arent just hostile to life, but even to something as fundamental as the stable presence of liquid water.. Plus spontaneous formation of life’s basic building blocks (amino acids/proteins) is already statistically daunting.. the challenge deepens when we move from chemistry to cellular organization! A living cell isn’t a cluster of complex molecules; it’s an integrated system of coordinated processes. Molecular machines transcribe/translate information encoded in DNA, ribosomes precisely assemble proteins, membranes regulate nutrient-intake/waste-removal, regulatory networks maintain internal balance. These components operate interdependently. The question isnt simply how organic molecules arose, but how a system emerged where information is stored symbolically, interpreted by specialized machinery, and executed through dynamic, goal-directed processes. The leap from random molecular interactions to an information-driven, self-regulating cellular system appears so vast that attributing it to chance strains plausibility, inviting deeper reflection on whether such organization points beyond undirected processes.
When I hear you emphasize how improbable it is that the Synoptic Gospels were composed independently (especially given their verbatim agreements) then see you speak confidently about the likelihood of life emerging from nonlife, it feels like I’m listening to two entirely different voices.
Well, 100,000,000 stars averaged in 2,000,000,000,000 galaxies sure seems intriguing to me. This is not how we go about deciding about literary sources in any event; completely different beast.
Perhaps I’ve misunderstood/mischaracterized you.. It seems like you treat the verbatim agreement among the Synoptics as something too improbable to have arisen independently. Yet when considering the origin of life the posture appears closer to “sometimes unlikely things happen.”
To be fair, that drastically oversimplifies your view. Even so, I would still push back.
The universe is overwhelmingly hostile to the basic ingredients of life, and even the simplest living cell is an extraordinarily complex microscopic factory- infinitesimally unlikely to emerge unguided.
To your point, we’ve no agreed-upon way to calculate/verify the probability of life occurring from nonlife.
But in the absence of firm metrics, intuition inevitably plays a role. My intuition is that both the Synoptic similarities and origin of life are better explained by design than undirected processes.
You might respond by saying I’m failing to factor in the sheer scale of the universe (billions upon billions of stars) and perhaps my intuition simply isn’t equipped to grasp numbers that vast.
But I would counter that perhaps your intuition, in turn, struggles to grasp just how unlikely such tightly integrated systems would be to arise without direction.
And so we seem to reach something of an impasse.
I’m not saying that it is impossible that two people independently word entire sentences of a description exactly the same, time after time after time. It’s never happened so far as I know, but it doesn’t violate any laws of physics. The question is whether THIS is a pareticular instance of it.
Life is here and the evidence for evolution is overwhelming. That is completely unlike a “notion” such as the synoptic gospels being composed independently. There is no overwhelming evidence that the synoptics were composed independently.
I also completely disagree with your assertion that the simplest living cell is “infinitesimally unlikely to emerge unguided”. We watch cells emerge every day under the microscope from completely unguided processes. Just because you don’t know the exact processes under which the first cells emerged, doesn’t make some sort of vague, undefined “guidance” more probable. We see complexity emerge in unguided processes constantly.
Can we not add in the role of time in defining the possible instances of events in that already incredibly many stared universe? How many opportunities over 13+ Billion years?
‘If it exists, it is possible to exist” seems weak logical support for something unusual to exist. It is true but weak, reminding me of circular reasoning, even if not technically circular.
As an aside, I’ve heard you argue that historians typically refrain from proposing supernatural explanations for events like the resurrection. Yet it’s worth noting that a number of respected biologists, when examining the historical question of how life arose from nonlife, do consider the possibility that a supernatural explanation should at least remain on the table.
NO! Two key terms you use: ‘Respected’ biologists and ‘on the table’.
Respected in what biological field? Evolutionary biologists would not consider a supernatural explanation reasonable in any way.
What do they mean by leave on ‘the table’. Perhaps if they mean that humans don’t know everything about the universe and that some features of physics could eventually be considered ‘supernatural’ then, maybe everyone should be open to new evidentiary discoveries.
I remember shaking my head in disbelief when at the conclusion of their book ‘Science, Creation and the Bible: Reconciling Rival Theories of Origins’, Tremper Longman III and Richard F. Carlson (who is a physicist) agree evidence abounds for the ‘big bang’, then conclude that the bible is the inerrant word of god. To me, this is evidence that faith can distort a person’s willingness to accept reality.
Just to name a few respected biologists who believe God actively works within creation:
Francis Collins is a renowned geneticist and former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) who led the Human Genome Project to completion in 2003. A leading advocate of “theistic evolution” (or evolutionary creation), Collins argues that God created the universe and its laws, and that evolution is the process through which God brought about biological life.
Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Paleobiology at the University of Cambridge and a leading expert on the Burgess Shale fossil site, has argued that evolution displays remarkable patterns of convergence (similar biological solutions emerging repeatedly in different contexts.) He suggests that this may indicate certain outcomes, including intelligence, are built into the structure of the universe, reflecting a creation with underlying purpose.
Denis Alexander, former director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at Cambridge, has a research background in immunology and molecular biology. He emphasizes that God often works through ordinary natural processes and argues that while science may explain the chemical mechanisms behind the origin of life, its ultimate source still depends on God.
Key word there “believe”! Science does not work by belief, and no amount of belief is evidence of anything. Not one of them has ever offered any research or evidence that in any way validates their mere personal belief.
Btw, I am well read on Simon Conway Morris in paleontology and his work on the Burgess Shale assemblage in particular. Convergence (or analogy) in adaptive evolution does not require a deity it is simply a consequence of the fact that only so many adaptive strategies are efficient in similar ecological niches. Wings of some sort will always evolve in flight in the atmosphere but never for burrowing. Fins of some sort work well in aquatic environments, but limbs are far more efficient for terrestrial motility. Adding ID on top of this very natural algorithmic process is simply a violation of Occam’s Razor, needlessly multiplying entities beyond what is needed to amply explain a phenomenon.
Science doesnt operate by “belief.” The word means “knowledge.” For example, experiments show hummingbirds disproportionately visit red feeders compared with other colors. “Hummingbirds prefer red feeders” therefore reflects scientific-knowledge.
But why does this preference exist? Several hypotheses could account: Red may stand out against green foliage, resemble reddish hues of flowers hummingbirds pollinate, or attract fewer competing birds. Evidence establishes the pattern, but multiple explanations remain possible.
Observations can be clear while underlying causes/explanations debated. A classic example is the Einstein–Bohr debate. Einstein *believed* physical reality exists independently of observation, Bohr *believed* particles lack definite states until measured. Both interpreted the same evidence but *believed* different explanations.
When scientists face questions where direct testing/observation is limited (ie:origin of life), they rely on “inference to the best explanation” (what Im calling “belief”). Competing hypotheses are proposed/evaluated based on how well they explain available evidence. These explanations remain provisional/debated unless/until new discoveries arise.
Morris argues the repeated emergence of complexity/intelligence may be built into the fabric of reality, challenging the view humans are evolutionary accidents. Convergence is consistent with a “purposeful” universe. Science describes how convergence happens, but philosophy/theology may ask why the universe has a structure that makes convergence possible.
“When scientists face questions where direct testing/observation is limited (ie:origin of life), they rely on “inference to the best explanation” (what Im calling “belief”).” Scientists make “inferences” based on previously validated knowledge and facts. Theologians have no such basis, they just make it up whole cloth.
Morris’ “belief” in this case is not of the same epistemological status. It is just plain faith, or blind belief. Convergence isn’t evidence of a purposeful universe it is evidence that certain things work and others do not. Nor in any way does complexity, and the natural evolution toward complexity imply intelligent design. Much current science (Complexity Theory, Dissipation Driven Adaptation, Deamer’s work, Kaufmann’s “order for free” points toward an entirely natural predilection on the part of nature (physics, and pre-biotic chemistry) to evolve and become increasingly complext. No intelligence needed, just the laws of physics and nature.
I think that we think that all the conditions necessary to produce us being in place at the right time and to the right degree (the ‘goldilocks’ scenario) are so unique and unlikely because we think we are unique and special. But if we are nothing special, then maybe it’s not that surprising. After all, people win the lottery despite the long odds. But the downside to that is that it all becomes rather random and meaningless and could lead to a feeling of hopelessness and an undermining of the collective moral compass. So, we come back to intelligent design and the concomitant theodicaean problems. So my view (as I’ve said before) is that we have been designed by a divine being but one who is not perfect and who occasionally gets things wrong 😉. What I like to call the ‘Marcion Hypothesis.’
Thank you for the very clear and vivid thoughts. Concerning the question of the existence of God, I suppose that the real question is, not how possible was the emergence of life, but the miracle of the very existence of Being. We take Being for granted – but we shouldn’t. If we look from inside of Being, where we find causation, laws of physics etc, no miracle is needed. However, if we try and think the fact that we ARE, it is a miracle, and the idea of a God (if you may use this traditional terminology) seems less unlikely. Life may be a possible, yet rare event inside cosmos, but If we think ontologically, the absurd fact that there is Being, well, that cannot be explained at all….
Usually when people use statistics arguing how unlikely the chance of life forming naturally, I notice a lot left out of consideration. How do you even figure all the variables in the odds? What was the environment at every place on the earth: atmosphere… liquid chemicals… temperature… sub ocean volcanic plume… meteor or asteroid strike… etc. Given this and that statistically unlikely events happen all the time, to me it is much more logical to think it did happen naturally than to try to justify a magical being for an explanation. Plus then I have to figure out where this magical being came from!
In the gospel according to me, when God said let there be light, that was the big bang. In that nanosecond, All the rules of physics, chemistry and biology came into being. God then used those rules to create everything in the universe. Using those rules He began the long process of developing what could become life and eventually a sentient being, namely us. Being omnipotent and omniscient God was able to perhaps guide the direction that led to what we see today. Because of the statistical probability that this world is as it is is so small makes me believe in divine intervention and guidance. J.B Phillips in his book “Your God is Too Small” makes me think that nothing, however statistically difficult to believe, is beyond the ability of God to accomplish in order to fulfill whatever His divine plan is.
I think NO ONE KNOWS. For those who believe we are created by God in His Image, we can live our lives with Him. At times – in spite of ourselves – we get to do something good and that is glorious.
We could use some of that good and glorious just now… Thanks.
I’ve always been interested in fundamental questions; do mathematics and probability exist in some Platonic realm as many mathematicians and physicists believe? Do our laws of physics exist in this realm, or are they “reshuffled” whenever a new universe is born? (assuming there are others). Are there different levels to Truth, or, as the Priestess of Yonada asked the Oracle on one Star Trek episode, “is not the Truth the truth for all?” Is Beauty really only in the eye of the beholder, or does it also inhabit this higher realm, as Plato believed? The origin of life is a mystery, but I don’t believe it occupies this rarified category of a being a truly fundamental question. Logic, Probability (Quantum and Classical), Laws of Physics, Mathematics – yes, but life from non-life (assuming we even know what those terms mean) – No.
The improbability argument for intelligent design falls on its own sword. If simple life is too improbable to have come about by chance, then surely an “intelligent designer” is less probable by orders of magnitude. Invoking a God doesn’t solve the mystery of the origin of life; it just postulates a greater mystery and one that’s effectively a “black box.”
From the standpoint of compound probability theory, that is an excellent point. You would at least have to take the probability of life emerging from nonlife times the probability that an intelligent designer is responsible (some value <1). Brilliant. I don't know how that can be refuted.
I like your comment that something can be nearly impossible, but that “nearly” leaves some wiggle room for it to happen. And if it happened once, it probably can happen again.
I found the book, “God’s Ecstacy: The Creation of a Self-Creating World” by Beatrice Bruteau, very interesting. She describes how all the processes to get from the Big Bang to intelligent life are built into the fabric of creation. Intelligent life is not improbable, it is inevitable.
I believe (feel) life and evolution happen when the conditions are right. When the conditions are right, it is Desire that gets and keeps things going.
Those who argue that life (or evolution) requires a designer simply do not understand the effect of the number of events that take place over the billions of years that the universe has existed. Bart correctly notes that any individual outcome, such as the combination of proteins into DNA, may be unlikely, but the universe tries its experiments so often that essentially any possible outcome happens occasionally. That complex life has evolved on earth is indeed unlikely, but the odds that it has done so somewhere in the universe are overwhelming. We just happen to be the lucky lottery winners.
I believe that molecules, and the laws of physics, chemistry, and matter, must have had a creator, because everything could not have come from nothing, especially given the vastness of the universe and all it contains. The formation of the earth and the living creatures on it was likely guided by the divine, but the laws and necessary components were already in place so that “miracles” could occur, even if the odds were extremely low. I’ve heard the example of a new car, which is far less complex than a human being: how long would you have to wait for a fully assembled car to appear by chance? Even a trillion years would not produce a car with perfect paint, wheels, fluids, and all its parts correctly arranged. If you could not see the people who built it, the finished product might look like the result of chance, and you might believe it was chance, but in reality it was assembled by humans using component molecules that already existed in the environment.
Whatever it is that underlies existence is unknown to science, philosophy, organized religion, and metaphysics. There has always been a lot of controversy over this stuff in each of those areas. It is not even clear that probability theory applies to many of the issues you noted. To the extent that it does apply, then there is the problem of defining sample spaces and probability measures on those sample spaces that are not controversial. Good luck with that. Quantum theory is probabilistic and may people have mistakenly assumed that means determinism is false. Probability theory doesn’t say if determinism is true or not; there may be a hidden determinism in quantum state reduction. If so, then everything that happens has a 100 percent probability of happening. I suppose intelligent design can be defined in different ways just as the word “God” can be defined in different ways. If there is a God, it is not God as defined by organized religion.
For fun see Robert Sapolski Sabine Hassenfelder video. Also on Neil deGrasse Tyson Robert Sapolski Max Tegmark…Mind blowing .
Reminds me of one of my favorite Jim Carry quotes – “so you’re saying there’s a chance “.
Or more accurately Lloyd Christmas
Right!!!
Ha! One of my favorite goofball movies.
God really did make man from the dust of the ground, i.e., from inorganic material: https://nautil.us/how-did-life-begin-506507/ I don’t understand why intelligent design folks don’t marvel at God’s plan, creating the universe in a big bang and humans, etc. from a big rock, via things he designed to evolve, not in a predestined way but contingently (which leaves room for free will).
My reaction is that there are far too many unknowns in these estimates. A few examples:
We have basically no clue as to how common life is (in the universe). Extraterrestrial life in our own solar system is still an open possibility.
A few decades ago we knew almost nothing about exoplanets (planets around other stars). There has been impressive progress, but a lot is still unknown.
The estimate you give for the size of the universe is really an estimate for the size of the *observable* universe: there are serious arguments in favor of the idea that the observable universe is only a small (how small??) fraction of the entire universe.
So yes, the desired probabilities are incalculable in the literal sense: we cannot calculate them because we lack information.
I never thought about it that way – thanks!
Now can you distill that into one or two sentences that I can use when necessary?
One sentence: If it is remotely possible, it’s *possible*!
I enjoyed knowing your thoughts on this subject. You made a sophisticated distinction between statistical impossibility and physical impossibility. If i’m not mistaken your argument is that we are the lottery winners of the universe. I’m an evolutionist today, and I reject ID, because I think its anti-science propaganda, to sell. Another point I think ID doesn’t have a compelling model yet. But a slightly turn of your argument is that modern biochemistry is starting to suggest that life is not as random as shaking a box of legos and hoping a self replicating molecule falls out. For people studying in depth biochemistry its really hard to accept some of the specifics of complex molecules. For example, the DNA chain not being “random” because of the tendency of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, to snap together into a meaningful structure governed by laws, not impossible though. I prefer terms as “highly improbable universe”, “highly improbable origin of life”, “highly improbable molecules”, and so on.
You are correct. A couple other issues plus a reference.
First, statistically comparisons need to have some basis of similarity. Dice, cards, placing satellites in orbit, efficacy of drugs, etc. all have a basis of similarity or some commonality from which probabilities can be calculated. No way NASA could have calculated the probability of an earth-orbiting satellite actually orbiting then returning to the earth, if not for all of the previous rocket propulsion and orbiting data.
That said, the earth with life that started and evolved can be considered a ‘sample size of one’ because we haven’t yet found other planets with enough similarity to calculate probabilities. Just saying billions of galaxies and trillions of planets calculates out to …. is not reasonable.
Second, here is the reference. Neil Shubin’s book ‘Some Assembly Required’ is a great lay audience explanation of evolutionary biology. He explains all of the items in the comments on this topic, plus more. Also, his NOVA/PBS documentary ‘Your Inner Fish’ should be a must see in middle school, high school, college and probably in churches.
Thanks for pointing me to the 2.0 Bryson book. I realize that you are not trying to take some evolutionary biologist’s job, so we can’t expect to get the whole story (as if we have the whole story) from a New Testament scholar. But I appreciate that you chose to bring up the subject. One of the mistakes that most objectors to evolution make is to buy the old ‘hurricane reassembling a 747 from junk yard parts’ argument that assumes that evolution depends on purely random mutations. This leaves out the other very necessary component of evolution, natural selection. Mutation creates variation. Natural selection decides which variations survive and spread. So, while consideration of only the statistics of unlikely events is an interesting exercise, we need to pay due attention to the important role of natural selection.
Well stated. Don’t forget that atoms and molecules have electrical potential. Even water is a polar molecule. I like to tell people who use the ‘juggle a bunch of parts and a book or airplane won’t be created’ approach that those parts don’t have electrical potential. Atoms and molecules, proteins, amino acids, etc. operate because they actually have electrical potential, while airplane parts and wooden scrabble blocks don’t.
When drawing lottery numbers, the numbers are completely independent of each other. It’s different when life originates. When a specific molecule is created that is necessary for life to arise, a great many combinations are eliminated. It’s like when you choose a particular direction on a journey; it becomes more likely that you will reach places in that direction. The other possibilities become less likely.
The scientific consensus is that the universe began in a hot, dense state—the Big Bang Theory. What happened before that is not a thing because BBT is considered the literal beginning.
When scientists say that something came from nothing, it’s misleading because they don’t usually mean absolutely nothing. Most of their theories—the big bounce, multiverse, gravitational waves, exotic fields, quantum states—that’s not something from nothing. Many scientists state that “something from nothing, (as in absolutely nothing)” is logically incoherent and cannot be defined.
To me it sounds like certain scientists imagine a beginning before the beginning because they don’t like the evidence, so they wrestle around with it and come up with a different beginning that is more akin to an atheistic fever dream. Then I have to wonder what’s wrong with these people. They’re strangely negative about life and seem to enjoy it. It’s sadistic and weird.
Maybe this short answer will help:
“Intelligent Design” is just the latest (and hopefully last) version of the “God of the Gaps” argument.
(as in gap in human knowledge, requiring God to fill)
That is, there is some aspect of reality that is beyond human knowledge to explain.
Religious people point to that and say “Ah ha! can’t be explained. So it must be supernatural!”
I now point to the long history of supernatural explanations for what are now known to be natural phenomena (the sun, lightning, many illnesses etc).
I say, no need to care if we can’t explain it now. the track record of “God of the Gaps” arguments is they have fallen.
And get back to serious problems
As someone of Jewish culture, especially Progressive Jewish, we are just not that impressed by miracles.
See The Oven of Akhnai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oven_of_Akhnai
It’s not just the fantastically high number of galaxies, stars and planets: even just on Earth, there are also the fantastically long timescales involved: the gap between the Earth’s cooling and the earliest evidence for life is several hundred million years. It then takes another *2.5 billion* years for life to develop multicellularity, and a further billion years passed before the Cambrian explosion.
So yes, the dice rolls involved in both the origins of life and in its development to a level where relatively rapid and diverse evolution can take place may have the odds stacked against them; but the dice were rolled an unimaginably large number of times. To think that makes the spontaneous origin of life impossible is just a failure of imagination.
Couldn’t agree more! I love discussions like this. Imho, the appeal to statistics in support of intelligent design often overlooks some things. First, I don’t think most people truly appreciate the numbers. Of course the vastness of the universe as you pointed out, but also the staggering levels of life on this planet and its capabilities. I’m a microbiologist, and I see firsthand everyday how quick life can grow and change. Just for example, if a bacterium divides every 20 minutes, that’s 72 times in one day equaling 2^72 total bacteria (that’s ~47 with 20 zeros after it!) Now, that’s a controlled environment with no competition, but still, my point is that I think some people throw out crazy odds in support of ID, but don’t realize how well life can keep up with those odds.
And then secondly, most people don’t consider the anthropic principle. If the only way to observe something is for that something to first have happened, then the odds don’t really matter. We’re only able to question the odds because those odds must have happened in order for use to be here to question them.
Really enjoyed your post!
There was a time when I considered Intelligent Design but soon learned that data contradict it; all of its basic tenets have been thoroughly debunked. On the other hand, I do believe God influences events in intimate and remarkable ways – but it still requires faith for us to believe it.
An example is the Anthropic Principle, which states that the fixed constants of science are highly tuned to support our existence. Another is the Convergence Principle in evolutionary biology (e.g., the elephant’s trunk and the octopus’ arm are surprisingly similar). As for life itself, isn’t it amazing that rock structures capable of trapping for an extended time the essential ingredients for life are found near the deep-sea hydrothermal vents needed to support the initial evolution of life? Coincidences? Tuning? Or is our universe the only one among nonillions in a multiverse where such requirements for life exist? We’ll never be able to prove God’s creative involvement, especially since we now know our world is probabilistic, but that’s the whole purpose of faith, right?
Have you ever read the final chapter of Sagan’s ‘Contact’ regarding the detailed calculation of ‘pi’? I recommend it.
I have not. THanks!
The main problem with the design argument is the belief that mankind is central to the purpose that underpins the existence of the universe. Also why would an intelligent designer be inclined to actualize a human friendly cosmo?
I often wonder why Christian’s don’t question why in eternity god chose this time to create us and the universe, what has god been doing for all of eternity going backwards from when he had the bright idea of making the universe.
Our earth is just one grain of sand amongst all the sands on earth, does god only worry about our grain of sand,
Perhaps God decided after He’d created everything else imaginable to create Himself?
It is curious that you should cite the second law of thermodynamics as the one physical law that cannot be broken, because it is fundamentally a statistical law, and one that in principle _can_ be broken. Only it is exceedingly unlikely that it will (also the quantities it talks about are in a sense artifacts of our subjective description of the situation, in that we group many states together as macroscopically equivalent). At the most elementary level the laws of physics are time-symmetric, so reversing time in the flow of historic events gives a scenario that however unlikely is _possible_, but in which the second law of thermodynamics is constantly violated.
You could have chosen from many other laws, like conservation of electrical charge, for examples of where violation is really impossible rather than vanishingly improbable.
Seems to me we have two considerations at the very least. First is the possibility of life forming spontaneously and as a side note, obtaining consciousness and self awareness, but we also have the issue of gendered life. Perhaps we can make a WAG (wild ass guess) as to probability of life forming spontaneously, but seems like its a much bigger WAG to assume that somehow we became gendered and therefore dependent upon two animals, human or otherwise, developing concurrently but along different, but essentially parallel, evolutionary paths to allow for reproduction.
Human beings are emotional creatures. The function of our rational faculties is to “rationalize” our emotional decisions. This topic is overly charged with emotion,because everyone has “skin in the game”. Everyone is invested in the topic. Everyone’s concept of SELF and SELF’s worldview is involved. Everyone’s Mental Defense Mechanisms (MDM) is fully engaged. We “reason” through our MDM, but our MDM is not concerned about accuracy or correctness. Our MDM has three modes of operation: Pathos, Ethos, and Logos.
The young Bill Cosby was a comedian who produced comedy LP albums. One album was dedicated to his twin brother, Russell, who died early. The two boys were jumping on the bed that they shared at night, and the bed broke. The loud noise brought their father into the bedroom, and he saw the broken bed. He asked his two sons, “Who broke the bed?”
50% (more or less) of Americans will respond to the topic of Intelligent Design as Bill and Russell responded to their father.
It seems to me that there are several issues here. First: probabilities are always relative to what is already known. Almost everything we know happened in the past – sometimes in the distant past – and the event we’re trying to assign a probability to can also be in the distant past; it makes no difference. This follows from Bayes’ Theorem, which follows from the basic axioms of probability. Second, almost *every* event at above the molecular level that ever happened is unique if described all the way down to the sub-atomic level. Third, biochemists are *very* close to figuring out how life could have arisen in the early earth environment. In fact, there are probably several ways, each likely enough that there may well have been several independent creations of life, some different than others – though only one lineage has survived natural selection to the present. This would be true of any earth-like planet (and some quite different) anywhere in the universe. There’s apparently evidence that it happened on Mars.
(continued) Fourth, the so-called Big Bang is no longer the most likely theory, it seems, of the beginning of the universe. Current physics is full of better theories on which the universe had no beginning in the common sense of the word (we may have been spawned by “prior” universe in which time runs *backward* relative to our time). The Big Bang singularity was a prediction of General Relativity; when you fold in Quantum Mechanics (hard to do since we haven’t found a way to make it consistent with GR) the picture fundamentally changes. (Ironically, critical Bible scholars have spent many years trying to assess the probability that Jesus said/did this or that, often using deeply flawed criteria imo.)
What a great post — and some fantastic comments! Here’s a thought experiment: Suppose we could reverse time so that we returned to the moment of the Big Bang. Christopher Hitchens proposed that the universe that would emerge from this Big Bang would be very different from the one we live in. I agree; however, I think that the same rules of physics would apply — every action would still have an equal and opposite reaction, the laws of thermodynamics would still apply, light would still travel at 186,000 miles per second, etc. Moreover, it strikes me that built into the recipe is the inevitability that, after a few billion years of cosmic expansion and cooling, life would eventually emerge AND that it would eventually evolve AND that it would eventually evolve into intelligent, sentient life.
This doesn’t prove the existence of God or a creator, but it does seem to underscore Freeman Dyson’s famous observation that “As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.”
The difference between a posteriori and a priori probabilities is important. The a priori probability that a deck of 52 cards will be dealt in any particular order is on the order of 10^67. Yet, a hand with such a low probability happens. Every single time! Calculating the a posteriori probability of an event is useful only when we know ALL of the variables involved in that event and in comparing with an a priori intention. If a hand corresponds to some pre-existing special pattern, we know the dealer cheated.
For abiogenesis, we are very far from knowing all the variables. Probabilities are useless. But enough progress has been made in studying organic self-sustaining systems to realize that it is plausible for life to originate from the environmental conditions following the formation of planet Earth. We may never know exactly how, but it is plausible.
The ID community argues that instead of being a “God of the gaps” argument, they have a positive argument since they insist that new information can only be created by an intelligent agent. This, however, is not a valid claim. New information is generated at virtually every biological reproductive event without any intelligent agent.
Also, ‘if it exists, it is possible to exist without a creator” does not necessarily follow from ‘if it exists it is possible to exist.’ Without a creator may be true, but it does not logically follow.
Agreed the origin of life from non-life is possible without requiring a divine Designer. An even bigger problem is the so-called fine-tuning problem, why are the laws of physics and the values of about twenty constants which could have taken any value during the big bang so finely tuned to make life possible? Many scientists think the only possible explanation is that we live in a multiverse. There have been countless big bangs, each with different laws of physics and values for the constants, with almost none of them suitable for creating life. That also doesn’t require a divine Designer.
Thanks for the feedback, all! I have to confine myseif to just a few comments. On the probability of evolution of intelligent life, my go-to book is Russell Powell, Contingency and Convergence. Somewhat technical. Randyisaac makes essential points: first, a single new datum can radically change the posteriors, and we never know whether an unknown one lurks. Second, Bayesianism is always vulnerable to the difficulty of knowing whether any live hypotheses haven’t been thought of. Big problem.
The fine-tuning argument is another large topic. The fine-tuning argument(s) raise another hornets’ nest of problems. What is a law of nature? Can God create them? How? Causally? Does that presuppose a law? Might the actual laws be the only possible ones? In all versions I know of, the argument faces the challenge of Bertrand’s Paradox (look it up). Robin Collins’ defense of the argument is worth checking out. What we know so far about multiverses makes me skeptical of invoking them. The notion of “information” has been quantified, but I don’t think that’s close to capturing what is at stake here. I myself prefer abductive reasoning – reasoning to the best explanation (also vulnerable to the unknown hypotheses problem).
Charles Darwin is the champion of macro-evolution theory. In his work, On the Origin of Species 1859 he writes,
“Why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?”
“. . . as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the Earth, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species.
Darwin said, if his theory was correct then, “There should be an INNUMERABLE amount of transitional forms found EVERYWHERE.”
Irreducible complexity and reverse engineering show that the theory fails and is not possible.
Either evolutionary scientists are correct that everything is a random production from nothing, or Jesus was correct when He said, “In the Beginning God created.” Matthew19:4, Mark10:5,6
Lack of laboratory(or any) evidence, that matter or information can be produced by nothing, refutes the opinion of random chance.0+0=0,0×0=0
CONTINUED……
That’s because Darwin had it wrong since he didn’t understand the genetic mechanisms and was only looking at visible form. Genetics can change continually without resulting in changed forms. Conversely, certain specific genetic changes can bring about significant changes in form, but once again that was beyond Darwin. It is just as well to look at genetics and sexual reproduction as an instrument of stability. Darwin thought that the changes were there, but too subtle to see in the period of one lifetime or even several. In fact, genetics are fairly stable. What is not quite so stable is environment. That’s why biologists now point more toward specific period of genetic or species change brought about by changes in the environment, usually following and followed by longer epochs of stability.
Michael Strauss, senior physicist at the Hadron Collider taught me; the big bang had only one chance to get it right, and there had to be a precise amount of matter. Too much(over 1%) and gravitational attraction would have caused the universe to collapse in upon itself. 2% less and everything flies apart. The strong nuclear force was exact. 1%more and massive nuclei would form; highly radioactive and detrimental to life. More than 1% less and all the elements in the periodic table(except hydrogen) would fall apart. This exactness is the result of skill not luck.
The Creator Revealed: Michael G. Strauss
DNA functions on a 21 amino acid alphabet. Like ours, if thrown around randomly conveys no information. When arranged in deliberate order conveys a library of information. RNA works through a gene regulatory communication network, creating bond and don’t bond situations(e.g.bond:hydrochloric acid in the stomach, don’t bond:hydrochloric acid in the eyes). Information is not random, and coded information doesn’t write itself, it is produced by a coder, writer, an architect. It is transmitted via ATP. Malfunction can be random but the information is produced by engineering, an engineer.
Evidence of an Architect: Eugene W. Emmerich III
Darwin was a pioneer – over 150 years ago. He had no idea what the mechanisms of gene mutation/transmission are, just the work of Mendel, his own field work, and a basic suggestion by David Hume. We now have a nearly complete story at the molecular level, the saltational theory of Stephen Jay Gould, and much much more. Emmerich is an architect, not a molecular biologist. Talk to my son, who is. Emmerich’s evidence which you cite ignores natural selection entirely. Some of the most sophisticated work to defend intelligent design is that of Dembski, a mathematician. His work has been definitively debunked. As for Strauss: his book was published 7 years ago. That’s a long time in modern cosmology, especially now. The James Webb telescope had not been launched. My guess is that Strauss was working with the singularity solution to General Relativity, which was known from the start to have fundamental problems given Quantum Field Theory. Physicists are now hard at work finding ways to include QM, and the results are not compatible with a singularity. May I recommend, once again, Russell Powell’s Contingency and Convergence (MIT Press, 2020)? Exciting reading; title uninformative.
I don’t think Darwin was familiar with Mendel’s work when he wrote Origin of Species was he?
Mea culpa. I should have checked. And as you will surely know, Hume was anticipated centuries earlier by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, 5th to 4th centuries BCE, and much later (1st century BCE) by the Roman philosopher Lucretius, who was influenced by Epicurus. I believe they were also unaware of Mendel’s experiments with peas.
to Bart: your refrigerator “violates” the 2nd Law: it turns warm air into cold air. It does so by running a compressor that takes advantage of Jule’s Law, the first law of thermodynamics. That is to say that you can create order from disorder by using some energy to do so. I have no idea what the entropy of a spirit body is (does anybody?) Sorry for the pun. We do it all the time, when we metabolize food or grow new body cells. So no problem – *if God can provide the energy.* If He is not a material being, then He *will* violate the laws of conservation of energy and/or momentum. (Well, there are some interesting special cases, but that would take the conversation into, e.g. quantum uncertainties.)
Yes, you can certainly force decreased entity, but within a closed system the entropy always increases. There’s no documented instance of it not. That’s why it’s a law instead of a good suggestion. There are lots of in stances of forced decrease — trillions of htem. But they require certain conditions. Trillions of other situations never have it happen, including stirred cream in coffee and human cells dying. Physicists will argue that *theoretically* it could happen (e.g. that in *theory* you could spray the room spray and have all the molecules recongregate by to the can), but they too will agree that it never happens — if you try it a billion times with either cream-in-coffee or dead-cells, it ain’t gonna work (and certainly never has). Historians aren’t interested so much in whether it’s theoretically possible to run the film backwards because time necessarily moves forward (another effect of entropy!!), and if the past can only be reconstructed on the basis of probabilities, then something that is known to happen all the time is always more likely than something that has never happened in documented history.
Thanks for taking the time on this, Bart; I appreciate it. But if God is in the system, it’s *definitely* not a closed system. That is what I was considering. (BTW, superconductors have zero entropy.) And Hume, I think had it right: you could, in principle, gather enough testimonial evidence of a genuine miracle to match the evidence against. It’s just that, with a long history of transmission, the opportunity of that happening is, indeed, vanishingly small. So of course we are in agreement on the substance.
But not, perhaps, on what the miracle stories are meant to communicate. IMO, they are both true and profound. But not literally true, and not intended to be taken that way. In my view they are parabolic and would have been so understood by contemporaries, at least those who were educated. Hoi poloi nowadays probably believe the George Washington and the cherry tree story is literally true.
For more on the metaphysics, some might be interested in my *Divine Intervention: metaphysical and epistemological puzzles* For more on interpretation of the miracle stories, a full exposition/justification is given in my *Reading Sacred Texts: Charity, Structure, Gospel.* (They are academic books.)
Yes, if we invoke God the laws of physics no longer apply. But there is no way of calculating the probability of that happening at any point (precisely because, unlike the laws of physics, there are no controls), so there’s no way of claiming that it is more “probable” in any given instance than an explanation that works without appealing to the supernatural. I’m not saying miracles don’t happen. I’m saying historians have no way of showing they probably did, even if they did. Just the way it is!
D’accord. I think we’re on the same page here. Shalom.
I think I believe in intelligent influence rather than intelligent design.
For myself, the question as to whether God created everything in creation and whether God exists are two separate questions. Right now, I don’t lean one way or another as to whether God is responsible for all of creation. I still have to work on this one.
I do believe in intelligent or spiritual influence, however, down through evolution and the creation of the universe. Something is nudging us along and bringing us along to better ends.
I suppose there can be negative spiritual influences as well. The trick is, and the answer is to go with the truly positive ones.