This is the second in my reports about the talks at the Nature of Nature
conference at Baylor April 12-15.
************
Simon Conway Morris, University of Cambridge.
Day 2 at the Waco conference started with one of my most anticipated talks,
that of Simon Conway Morris. I had admired his work on the Burgess Shale
fauna and was delighted to get a chance to meet him. As it turned out I got
several chances to discuss things with him. His speech was punctuated with
much dry British humor and was quite entertaining as well as informative.
Unfortunately, this report won't capture any of that humor.
He started out by saying the Cambrian explosion was unexplained at
present and that one could invoke a miracle if one wants to but he didn't
see a need to.(He repeated this several times) The differences among
the species are a molecular skin on a deeply similar architecture.
Thus, to change from one form to another at the time of
the Cambrian explosion wouldn't require all that much molecular
change. And as to why we didn't see explosive evolution during the
Precambrian, he suggested that early salty oceans might have suppressed it.
He then quickly turned to the question of the nature of evolution. Contra
Gould, who says that if you run the tape of evolution again, we would not
get anything similar to today's forms again, Morris says that we very well
might get, if not identical creatures, creatures which are very similar to
those alive today. This turned out to be the theme of his speech. He started
laying out the evidence by examining the genetic code. He noted that one
would not expect DNA to work but it works extremely well and is robust to
'insult' [mutation-grm]. He cited a study by Freeland and Hurst
{sic???--grm] but didn't give a reference. This study randomized the genetic
code and looked at a million alternatives. There are about 10^18 different
genetic codes. What their study showed was that DNA was extremely optimized.
Only 1 code in that million which was studied, was more efficient than ours.
He showed a chart that looked like:
# genomes
| ours *
| | ** **
| V ** **
| *** ***
| *** ***
| **** ****
| ***** ***
|***** ********
---------------------------------------------------------------------
<-------efficiency increases
The genetic code must have been in place 3.8 billion years ago and was
apparently optimized shortly thereafter. His point with this was that the
genetic code, if we started from scratch again, would likely come to
something very similar to the one we have.
Next he turned to chlorophyll. I won't draw the chart he showed. He pointed
out that chlorophylls of various groups are badly designed. They are not
efficient where sunlight sends out the most light. Chlorophylls absorptance
cluster at the upper and lower ends of the present light spectrum. His point
was that life can only solve certain problems in particular ways. There is
not unlimited variability in the solutions to biological problems. While
chlorophyll would be better if it absorbed in the central peak of the sun's
output, biology doesn't seem to be able to do it. This and the following
limitations appear to limit the types or families of solutions available to
biological systems.
The next study he presented was of 12 populations of E. coli were divided
into 12 populations allowed to divide 2000 times, and then each population
was split into 3, giving a total of 36 populations. They then made the
E.coli live off maltose, something that they could do, but something they
didn't like. The 36 populations with different life histories, converged on
the same solution. Once again, a limit on the types of solutions available
to the biological organism. [sorry I don't have the reference or even the
authors at this time.--grm]
He repeated again that we are a veneer on deep similarity. Convergence
occurs throughout the biological world and shows that a similar solution is
reached even by vastly different lineages. Examples of the marsupial sabre
tooth cat of South America with Smilodon of North America. The similarities
are amazing, but not identical. He then showed a praying mantis--a bug
optimized for grabbing and devouring prey insects. It has large eyes,
praying hands. The mantis shrimp was virtually identical and it too
occupied a similar aquatic niche as the praying mantis did in terrestrial
ecosystems. ONce again, the similarity was not absolute, but amazingly
similar. Camera eyes throughout the animal world are amazingly similar, but
not exact. This is not evidence of common design as commonly used by the ID
folk but evidence of deep limitations on the way biological creatures can
solve their problems. He cited the mole which sees with the electric fields
of its nose and a fish [momare??--grm] that sees with electric fields also.
He then cited a controversial piece of convergence. Neanderthals at the end
of their career developed culture that made jewelry. He noted that the
manner of manufacture of Neanderthal trinkets was different from modern
peoples, and may have actually occurred earlier than the similar development
in modern men.
I will say a bit about what I understand of Morris's theological views. He
acknowledged that he was a Christian and accepted the incarnation and
resurrection. In my discussions with him over the next couple of days, he
seems to believe that design was imprinted in the universe deeply and that
is why when biological systems are faced with certain problems, there are
only certain solutions, which must be accessed over and over again. In his
speech, he said that once you have a mammal, it is nearly inevitable that
you would get a human! This is certainly a different view from Gould's.
In the Q&A, most people really seemed unaware of his work in the Cambrian.
So, I asked him to elaborate on what happened, was it miraculous, or
natural, and how explosive was it?. It was a leading question that I was
hoping would get him to say that phyla are found both before and after the
Cambrian. He
didn't say that, but he once again said there was no reason for a miracle in
order to explain the Cambrian explosion. He said it was the HOX genes coming
into play.
One additional note: In discussions with Stephen Meyer later that day, he
was under the impression that Simon Conway Morris believed that God
continually infused information into the genome. Considering what Morris had
said during the talk, I told Steve, "He did a great job of denying that in
his talk." Steve re-iterated that Morris was a believer in miraculous
infusion of info into the genome. I went up to Morris and asked him his
religious views and told him what I had been told about his beliefs. He
told me that he didn't believe that God miraculously input information
throughout time. He tended to believe that the universe was designed to
bring forth the life without further intervention.
****************
Michael Behe, Lehigh University
[Note, I am not a molecular biologist so I am doing my best on this
one--grm]
He began his talk with a series of quotations. The first was the famous
statement by Darwin, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ
existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive,
slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." I cazn
reference this from Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, (New York: The
New American Library, 1958), p. 171
He cited _Cell_ 1998, p. 92, Table of Contents: "Like machines invented by
humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world protein assemblies
contain highly organized molecular arrangements." [or something like that]
From these he said that a true acid test of evolution would be to wipe out
a system and see if evolution replaces it. This was suggested by Kenneth
Miller in Finding Darwin's God, and Miller cited one example of such a
test--the lac operon. Behe said that Miller's example was over exaggerated.
Lactose, according to Behe, triggers its own manufacture. And there are a
lot of chemicals involved here. Behe put up the following table:
Lac operon EBG operon
Galactosidase Galactosidae
Repressor repressor
Permease
IPT/gallotaclos
The experiment was supposed to wipe out the system, but according to Behe,
only Galactosidase was wiped out--not the system. And IPTG was used to
support the deficient bugs. Thus the experiment cited by Miller only needed
to replace one of the proteins. And thus the experiment was not what Miller
claimed it was. He also said that when the mutations replaced it, the only
mutations that arose were those specific to the lost function [I am not sure
how one can know this--grm], and that it violates our assumption of random
mutations. He said that the Ebg operon already had galactosidae and that
the Ebg active site is identical to lac operon in 13 of the 15 amino acid
residues. Thus this was easy for evolution to replace. He also said that
by putting !PTG in the media, the system was artificially supported by
intelligent intervention. Because of these reasons, Miller's example was
meaningless to the test Miller had proposed.
Then he turned to the criticism of R. Doolittle of Behe's blood clotting.
Doolittle had cited Bugge et al, Cell 87:709-715 as an example of the loss
of a gene in which the loss of a second gene actually healed the first
problem. Behe said that Bugge et al created mice without plasminogen and
other mice without fibrinogen genes. Then the two strains were crossed.
Here is what the data shows according to Behe:
lacking Plasminogen, lacking fibrinogen lacking both
thromboses no clotting no clotting
ulcers hemorrhages hemorrhage
high death rate death in pregnancy death during pregnancy
He said that the mice couldn't even live through reproduction much less
benefit from both mutations.
He then turned the gun and pointed it at his critiques. He said that a
frequent charge against ID is that it is not testable. He cited some
national scientific publication to that effect. He then said that Doolittle
and Miller advanced scientific arguments to falsify ID. " One can't have it
both ways". One can't say ID is untestable and testable at the same time.
Miller believes he has falsified ID, but if Miller's acid test were actually
performed on life and it failed, "would Darwinism be falsified?, he asked.
He then made the claim that Darwinism is impervious to testability. and has
placed science at a dead end. He put
up a slide:
ID--No unintelligent process could produce this system.
Darwinism-SOME unintelligible process can create this system.
ID can be disproven, he says by showing only ONE unintelligent process works
to create the system. He claimed that that had not been done. But in order
to disprove Darwinism, one must disprove ALL possibilities that might
possibly produce the system. He pointed out that that was a harder disproof
for Darwinism than for ID.
During the Q & A, Simon Conway Morris was the moderator. When my hand went
up he called on me. [I took this as evidence supporting the hypothesis that
he liked my question during his talk :-) --grm] I asked Behe that he has
spent a lot of time talking about what wouldn't work and asked him to tell
us what would work--if not evolution, what, then? Miracles? Behe stumbled
around a bit and finally said that God inputs information into living system
all along the way. I had hoped to get that clarification and statement from
Behe. He certainly avoided that in his book. Obviously, one can't prove
this possibility wrong. But then one can't provide evidence for its truth
either.
A theologian, in response to this, told Behe that that view makes God
responsible for venomous snakes (and a long list of other ills.)
*************
Christian De Duve, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
He began by saying that Naturalism is the notion that all manifestations in
the universe are explainable in terms of the known laws of physics and
chemistry. Methodological naturalism (MN) is a postulate. We should give up
MN only if we find something we can't explain with it, but we would still be
unable to tell the difference between a new law and the supernatural.
He had six points about what we know about the universe
1. The basic processes of life were understood
2. All known living organisms are descendants of 1 ancestor. [He may be
wrong if Woese is correct--grm]
3. The mechanism of evolution is known
4. embryological development is known
5 The origin of life still a mystery
6. the origin of consciousness is still unknown.
He went through the first 3 quicker than I could write. Beginning with
development he had several points
1. All cells of an organism have the same genome
2. The key to development lies in gene expression and repression.
3. Genes for coding transcription control other genes
4 homeogenes are important regulators
5. Development is being understood as a topologically organized phenomena of
selective transcription.
If you inject a mouse gene for a mouse eye into fruitfly, you get an eye,
but it is a fruitfly eye!
When you come to the origin of life, he did say we knew a lot about it. And
he presented an interesting argument for chance. He pointed out that if you
have some mechanism of chance in which each event has probability p, one can
calculate how many flips before it is 99.9% certain that each of the
possibilities will be represented in that many flips.
For instance with a coin, the probability is 1/2 heads and 1/2 tails. If you
flip a coin 10 times, then 99.9% of the time you can be certain that you
will have flipped at least one heads and one tail. He put up this chart
Probability 99.9% certainty
1/2 10
1/6 38
1/37 252
1/10^7 69 x 10^6
And for a mutation rate of 1/(3x 10^9) one needs only 20 billion cell
divisions to ensure that every single possible point mutation has been
accomplished. This can be accomplished in 1 day for bacteria, 1 month for a
eukaryote cell, 2 hours for stem cells in a human. [That, of course, makes
me wonder why my cells could possibly contain my original DNA anymore.
Something doesn't sound correct here.--grm]
De Duve admitted that the search for the origin of life has a long way to
go, but proteins are different from mechanical contraptions. Proteins are
extremely flexible and can do many things--not just one thing. Crystallines
in an eye lens derived from enzymes.
He then went on to describe how the origin of complex information took
place. Plausible pathways are offered by metabolism. Proteins are products
of modular assembly. Starting with 20-30 mers, followed by selection for
those
that did something useful, followed by more modular assembly/selection
cycles. I think this is called the hypercycle view of the origin of life.
The first proteins were very short.[At this time, I had seen Steve Meyer and
went to the back of the room to say hi to him. We had worked together years
ago at Atlantic Richfield in Plano. As De Duve said that the original
proteins were short, Meyer whispered, 'you can't get tertiary structure with
such short molecules'.--grm]
Anyway, to continue the talk, De Duve said that someone had shown that a
replicatable molecule could not be longer than the inverse of its error
rate(ER). length = 1/ER. Since 35,000 is the maximal length of RNA viruses,
this implies an error rate of 1/35,000. Since the DNA error rate is
1/100,000 one can have longer naked DNA molecules. And for the human
genome, with an error rate of 1/(3 x 10^9) it means that the longest DNA is
about the length of human DNA.
He then pointed out that with a 20-mer system of proteins, there are only
10^26 different possibilities. He noted that a small lake could contain
enough proteins of that length to go through the entire library in a
reasonable time. Selection gets the library down to 10^10 and then it makes
40 mer proteins with the ability to search a large portion of the
possibilities in a reasonable time. Then selection and the process repeats.
In this way, De Duve says, life can build its information. He stated that
there is no need for rejecting purely natural explanations for the origin of
life.
In passing, De Duve, endorsed Simon Conway Morris's concept of limited
solutions to biological problems.
When it comes to the origin of Mind, he said that the properties of life and
mind had to be included in the properties of the universe.
He concluded with a slide that defined various positions:
Creationism: does not qualify scientifically
Vitalism has "a long distinguished history" but it is wrong
Finalism--goal-directed entity in evolution. He said that molecular biology
had no room for this because it doesn't inspire
experiments.
Divine intervention--adopted only after all has failed. [which of course the
ID advocates would say is the case now.--grm]
Design--accepts naturalism, endows properties with intentionality. it is no
longer science but is "philosophical appreciation"
[On Saturday, I sat next to De Duve and we chatted for a while before the
talks began. He was unable to understand why so many people at the
conference rejected evolution. He told me that the strength of the
anti-evolution movement surprised him. He said, "Even the Pope accepts
evolution. I was there when he signed the paper" (presumably the encyclical
on evolution). ]
*********
Mark Ptashne, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Ptashne started his talk with a bit of rambling. Some of these ramblings
are: He complemented Behe. He said that most people didn't get the facts
straight about the blood clotting mechanisms, but he appreciated the fact
that Behe got the facts correct. He did say that Behe had the wrong
interpretation of the data. He criticized Behe for looking at the present
status and assuming that it said something about the origin of an object.
He decried the supposed fact that all the speakers were men. Of course, he
didn't get his facts straight on this, there was one Plenary Speaker who was
not a man--Nancy Murphy. She was the only one. He also said "There is a
sociology of science that tends to make creationists out of all scientists."
Listening to the beginning of the talk made me think he was going to be
favorable towards the concept of design. Boy was I wrong. He said that we
are made up of the genes of every other mammal and that evolution is not
caused by changing coding proteins. It is by changing the regulation of
those proteins that evolution occurred. He said that the hard part of
evolution might have been getting the enzymes and regulatory genes.
Everything after that was easy.
Flies develop by re-iteration of bacterial genes. Gene regulation is not
elegant it is the crudest way to do it. He cited these facts:
1. Gene activation is embarrassingly simple
2. switches require adding complexities of type
3. system is highly evolvable and quickly gives new meaning to biological
signals
4. Principles apply to many biological information processing systems.
He then went on to describe how gene regulation occurs and how it evolved.
He said that the world of a biochemist consisted of simply substrates,
locator, activator, anti-locator and an inhibitor. He constantly emphasized
how crude the mechanism is for gene regulation. [I hope I got this
correct--grm] The locator attaches to DNA and an activator attaches to it
and to RNA Polymerase. The RNA, lying over the DNA next to the locator
location transcribes the DNA so that a protein can be made. If an
inhibitor is a lying on the DNA under the Polymerase, the gene is blocked.
He suggested the following path for the evolution of gene regulation. He
used a gene for lactose. At first RNA could transcribe the DNA anytime it
bumped into the proper DNA location. This meant that production could occur
whenever. Later an activator and locator were added which guided the
polymerase into position. Since the cap on the activator requires glucose,
it meant that lactose could only be manufactured when glucose was present.
And after that, the repressor which requires lactose to block the lactose
gene. If lactose is absent, the repressor won't work. So adding this type
of repressor means that lactose can be made only if glucose is present and
lactose is absent.
He then said a beautiful design is not evolvable and that the process we see
is like a child with tinkertoys and velcro. He claimed that no intelligent
designer would design a switch like some that we see. Molecules run into
each other until one works. Nature is selecting from a tiny molecular touch.
He was also astounded that Behe would claim that science was at a dead end.
[An observation. He talked down to people. He has that right but it is not a
good way to get your opponents to listen to you. After going after Behe, he
went after the audience a bit. He said, "I don't know where you people have
been." as if everyone in the audience was a creationist. He said, "Maybe
you call yourselves creationists". Once again mistaking his audience. I
think because of this, the reaction to one of the questioners is somewhat
explainable.--grm]
In the Q&A an electrical engineer, in a long, long soliloquy, said some
circuits are badly designed in computers. He said that chips which are
supposed to adapt or do complex tasks may be created with flawed designs
because to do it right would require too much expenditure. So, the EE said
that bad design was actually designed. The crowd applauded him as if
science were a football rally. Ptashne didn't respond and missed a great
opportunity to advance his position by saying something like--so you expect
an omnipotent, omniscient Creator to do sloppy work?
Toole got up and read from Behe's book:
"Suppose that nearly four billion years ago the designer made the first cell
already containing all of the irreducibly complex biochemical systems
discussed here and many others. (One can postulate that the designs for
systems that were to be used later, such as blood clotting were present but
not 'turned on.' In present-day organisms plenty of genes re turned off for
a while, sometimes for generations, to be turned on at a later time.)
Additionally, suppose the designer placed into the cell some other systems
for which we cannot adduce enough evidence to conclude design. The cell
containing the designed systems then was left on autopilot to reproduce,
mutate, eat and be eaten, bump against rocks, and suffer all the vagaries of
life on earth. " Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box, (New York: The Free
Press, 1996), p. 227
He then asked if the blood clotting mechanisms of other animals had that
genetic mechanism but it hadn't been turned on. Behe said that this was not
his present scenario. And Behe wouldn't commit to test Toole's suggestion.
Ptashne got up and asked Behe what he would want scientists to do
differently? Behe said that he would like to have someone like Ptashne to
determine how something like phage lambda (a complex system) might have
evolved.
************
Steve Meyer, Director, Discovery Institute
Quoted lots of people and played to the audience rather than to the
scientific community. He kept apologizing to the scientists for the
elementary level of his presentation, which included a magnetic letter
board. I think his talk would have been better if he had done it straight.
He quoted Klaus Dose saying to the effect that we have an immense
appreciation of the origin of life today and that the advance in knowledge
has made the origin of life ever more difficult.
Steve said that the presence of information is evidence of something else
being the cause other than the universe. When in 1958 a protein model was
made, it was surprising that it was so irregular. and the 3D specificity is
extreme. This, Steve says, needs to be explained. Complete irregularity is
necessary for protein function and this is a mystery. [I would say that they
are not listening to what Yockey says about a sequence which is random and a
sequence which is complex are so similar that it is impossible to tell them
apart. Irregularity should not be a surprise--grm]
He then illustrated what he meant by complex vs specified complexity. He
showed two sequences like this:
fiw04mdhsodfhwyfdp10xa.gy
and
Time and tide wait for no man
The former, he says is complex but the latter is complex and specified. He
said that natural selection would be unable to create the information. The
creation of information must be associated with an intelligent agent. Much
of the rest of the talk was quotations. He quoted several people including,
Wald from 1954, Cairns-Smith, de Duve, Joyce and Orgel, Olaf Kuppers,
Polanyi, Dretski. He quoted Eigen to the effect that the hypercycles of de
Duve were not a solution.
During the question and answer session, after a brief moment of anxiety when
I couldn't catch my breath, I challenged two of the statements that Meyer
had
said--his definition of specificity and his statement that natural selection
can't create information. The problem with both these statements is
profound. First, spy codes look random, like the first sentence and thus
are specified complexity. I heard murmurings of agreement throughout the
audience. and example of the word 'potato' which according to Meyer would
by specified complexity can look like '[pysyp' with a simple shift code on
a qwerty typewriter. It also is specified info and complex to boot.
Secondly, the statement that natural selection can't produce information is
crazy because, as I pointed out, even the young-earth creationist, Lee
Spetner showed in Nature in 1964 that natural selection acts as an
information pump. Where Spetner went wrong was that he vastly underestimated
the rate of information transfer from the environment to the genome. Steve
asked me if he could answer some points by Judson, the moderator, who had
claimed a perogative for a few comments before opening the floor for
questioning. (Judson had given a boring 20 minute long soliloquy on info
theory and the history of it.) and Meyer answered Judson and never addressed
my points. Even Walter Bradley, who caught me
during the break said that Steve hadn't addressed my question, and he said
it without any prompting from me. Later that day, when I saw Steve again, I
told him that he hadn't answered my question. He didn't do it then either.
Ptashne pushed Meyer to define whether or not the DNA for each species was
individually designed by God and tell him where and when God did this. Sokar
asked "Can you make one empirical prediction from your model?" Meyer
replied that Dembski had made a prediction that he could find the missing
elements in the origin of life scenarios. Presumably this was the
information.
Another person got up and asked if tree rings could give low probability and
specific information? This is the low probability of finding the age of
something in its body. Meyer ducked and said that he was confining his
argument to the origin of life scenario. He repeated that several times to
different people.
******************
Sahotra Sarkar, University of Texas
Biological information is contingent but he wanted to show that information
theory presents no problem to evolution. He pointed us to the very first
time that the term "biological information" appeared in the literature. It
was in a letter to Nature on April 18, 1953. (I couldn't see on the slide
who the guys were or what the page number was). The term 'biological
information' was used to replace several previous terms that had been
banging around biology for a while.
And because there are different types of information, Sarkar spent some time
defining terms. First there is Shannon entropy which came from Claude
Shannon's wartime work which couldn't be published until after the war.
Secondly there was Norbert Wiener's Cybernetic information and finally,
there is semantic information as defined by Canap and Bar Hillel.
In 1958, Crick presented the Central dogma of information flow for biology.
Information goes from the DNA to the protein and once there, it can't flow
back to the DNA. For Crick, information was a specification of a sequence.
Sarkar then presented a signaling game in which one has a sender in one of
three states who can send one of three messages to a receiver to perform one
of three actions. He showed that this could create .29 bits/year with 1
generation per year. Given that the human genome has 3.3 x 10^9 bits, and
there are 3.5 x 10^9 years, one can almost create the human genome with 1
generation per year throughout history. Given that E. Coli has a generation
time of 15 minutes, it becomes clear that natural selection has no problem
with creating information.
One mathematician questioned Sokar's signaling game as playing shell games
with mathematics. He likened it to math students who do a partial proof from
the starting point, get so far, and then work backwards from the answer with
a big gap separating the two parts of the proof.
**************
Alan Guth, MIT
Guth said some amazing things which most creationists would find baffling.
He said that it doesn't take lots of energy to build a universe. Why? The
gravitational field is negative energy and matter is positive energy. Thus
there is a big cancellation and the energy level of the universe is not very
big. This would clearly undermine certain arguments I have seen.
He presented 6 items which needed examination.
1. Why is the universe big? approximately 10^90 particles. [I don't recall
the answer for this one--grm]
2. Where did the Hubble expansion come from?
ans: Inflation in the early universe caused the expansion.
3. Can we understand the chemical composition of the universe?
Ans: We can calculate it from the first principles in the Big Bang and
it comes out to be what we observe.
4. The flatness problem. Omega, the actual density of the universe divided
by the critical density, (the density needed to just stop the expansion) is
1 to 15 decimal places. This is often pointed to as an evidence of fine
tuning. Guth doesn't think so because during inflation omega is driven
towards the value of one regardless of what it starts as. Omega could have
started out as anything.
5. The homogeneity and isotropic universe must be understood. The cosmic
background is flat to one part in 100,000. Once again, inflation smoothes
things out
6. The present nonuniformity of the universe is understood as being due to
quantum fluctuations which occurred late in the inflationary period when
were then enlarged by expansion.
When it comes to fine-tuning, Guth said, "To me it is not clear whether the
universe is fine-tuned for life, or whether life has become fine tuned for
the universe." Not everything that is unexplained requires God. High
temperature superconductivity is still unexplained but we don't appeal to
God for an explanation. Similarly, he says we shouldn't do it with our
present inability to understand the origin of life. Nobody can look at the
present laws of physics and predict life. If the universe is fine-tuned, it
may have an explanation.
One explanation, according to Guth is eternal inflation. Once inflation
starts, it never stops. Inflation produces many universes and all universes
have similar laws at high energy. We are still uncertain if the low energy
laws (the laws that apply at temperatures we find comfortable) would be
different. However, because of this, all beings would find themselves in
universes that appear designed for life.
According the General Relativity, space is dynamical and can bend, stretch
and twist. creation doesn't violate conservation laws. The net charge
density is zero; the angular momentum is zero; and the large baryon number
does not violate anything because baryons are not conserved. It also doesn't
violate the first law of thermo. The energy of the universe is zero as
Toulman knew in the 1930s.
While science doesn't have a quantum theory of gravity and can't explain the
origin of the laws of physics, it doesn't mean that there isn't an answer.
[I find this to be a dangerous answer because when hit with problems for
their views, young-earth creationists often claim that in the future we will
find evidence for the global flood and a 6000 year old earth--grm]
*************
Howard Van Till, Calvin College
I was pleased to have breakfast with Howard on Friday morning before his
talk. While we had debated many times over various issues, we have many
points of agreement. It was the first time we had met face to face and I
found him to be a great encouragement.
Howard is known for his ability to craft a phrase. He was the theistic
evolutionist who came
up with the phrase "Fully gifted creation." On this day he tried out a new
phrase--the Robust Formational Economy Principle. And the title of his talk
was" Cosmic evolution as a Manifestation of Divine Activity, or Who owns the
robust Formational Economy Principle?"
He defined the formational economy of the universe as the set of all
dynamical capabilities that have contributed to the formation of the
universe (quarks-> nucleons -> nuclei -> different nuclei -> nuclei +
electrons (atoms) -> molecules -> galaxies stars and planets -> cells ->
organisms.)
He began with a series of questions. Is the universe self contained or does
it require something else? Are the laws capable of actualizing the universe?
Are the formational laws capable of actualizing life? Then he answered them.
Even if the answer to each question is yes, it doesn't require metaphysical
naturalism. If the formational economy is robust enough to make everything
without intervention does it mean we can do without God? The answer depends
on who is being asked. Traditionally creationists answer that there is no
way the universe can be so gifted. Stuff lacks abilities or there are gaps
in the abilities of matter-stuff. A variant version of this answer is that
cosmic evolution is ok but biological evolution is not.
Van Till says that there are typical answers from the various groups in
response to the idea of a robust formational economy and that it leads down
a bad path. The atheist says that if there are no gaps, what need is there
for a creator?
The theist then says, 'We will show you the gaps'. This leaves the theist
celebrating the holes in God's economy rather than the gifts God has given
it.
He concluded by saying that creation exists because God made it and then
invested it with all it needs. These capabilities are a gift.
*************
William Lane Craig Biola University
While most people were wearing casual (even some of the speakers), Craig
went around in impeccably tailored suits every day with every hair in place.
I wanted to introduce myself but the opportunity didn't present itself. He
was there to present a history of the views of the origin of the universe.
He presented an argument for a creator.
He said that general relativity (GR) made the static universe impossible,
recounting Einstein's development of the cosmological constant and Hubble's
demonstration of expansion. But this expansion implied a beginning and a
beginning implied a creator. He cited Eddington as believing the universe
was supernatural [sorry no reference--grm]. He implied that the idea of a
beginning to the universe became a driver for several of the efforts to
avoid a beginning to the universe. IN 1948 Hoyle, Bondi and Gold advocated
the steady state model. It never had any observational support and
eventually died. Another attempt was to have a cyclical universe. This
attempt to avoid a beginning died for several reasons: the Penrose-Hawking
singularity, no known physics to cause it to re-expand, the universe's mean
mass density is too small to stop the expansion [Guth and Craig should work
this one out--grm], and the entropy of each successive universe would
increase, causing the universe eventually to expand for ever.
Other attempts included the idea that the universe was a long-lived virtual
particle (1973), vacuum fluctuation models (should lead to infinitely old
universes). [It was about this time that I looked out the window of the
Cashion building and noticed a large copper-domed building that looked for
all the world like a large copper breast rising above the trees--just
curious if anyone has read to this point and will mention this. But
there is such a building. :-) --grm]
The Hartle Hawking coordinate transform avoids the initial singularity of
the Big Bang model, Craig said, by the introduction of IMAGINARY NUMBERS. He
put verbal emphasis on the word 'imaginary.' I couldn't understand why this
was such a big deal, having some slight familiarity with GR, imaginary
numbers appear in several coordinate transforms and it is no big deal. Then
I came to suspect that he was emphasizing the word in order to play to the
audience and make it sound like this was an imaginary universe!
With each failure to avoid the beginning, the beginning of the universe is
affirmed. This means that the universe must have a cause because a universe
without a cause is absurd. Given this, the very first state of the universe
can't have a scientific explanation because science deals with evidence and
causality. On this last statement, I agree with Craig.
Guth gave a brief response to Van Till and Craig. He said that Howard's
question pushed the problem of the origin elsewhere. Why a creator rather
than no creator? Guth saw no reason for the creator to be personal. And in
response to Craig's claim that an uncaused event is absurd, Guth said that
quantum events are uncaused. The Laws of physics are timeless, eternal and
uncaused.
That night there was a talk given by Horace Freeland Judson, George
Washington University. This was the guy who gave the 20 minute rambling talk
about info theory after Meyer and Sarkar had presented. The speech that
night wasn't much better. I am not into poetry and so found it rather
useless.
Thus ended the second day after Frank and I and Paul Nelson shared some
liquid refreshment.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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