The fallacy in Paley’s famous Watchmaker analogy was not that the Watchmaker was blind, as Richard Dawkins has suggested.
The problem is that Paley’s analogy assumed the rock could have always existed in an eternal universe, whereas if physicists are correct and the Big Bang created our universe, we can safely assume the rock has not.
No one is certain why a prehistoric civilization built a monument that we call Stonehenge, but we know this peculiar rock formation exists, because we’ve all seen pictures of it and can easily visit the physical location.
Was it a temple to worship the sun? A giant calendar? An ancient medical center?
Nobody knows who built Stonehenge, or why it was constructed. We can rather safely assume that someone built it, though.
Or can we? What makes us so certain that Stonehenge isn’t merely a natural rock formation somehow created miraculously by the vagaries of Time?
Because if you listen to Richard Dawkins explain the probability problems associated with our existential questions, he seems to be saying that as long as something is theoretically possible, it doesn’t really matter how improbable the event in question might be.
What makes us so sure that Stonehenge is not a naturally occurring rock formation? Well, it is extremely unlikely, no matter well how you craft any alternate explanation.
The rocks that form Stonehenge appear to have been quarried from a location several miles away.
The rocks that form Stonehenge shouldn’t be where they are — unless humans put them there. The rocks shouldn’t be stacked and apparently organized in alignment with constellations, if they don’t mean anything and served no purpose.
The much more feasible alternative to Time and luck to explain Stonehenge is to say that even though we have no idea how they managed to figure out how to lift tons of rock without the aid of cranes or other heavy construction equipment, for whatever unknown reason, human beings must have created the monument.
It simply isn’t logical or rational to assume the rocks managed to form such an intricate pattern by accident. Please remember that thought as we proceed.
Logic and rational thought are crucial elements in my Counterargument for God.
Recently, an atheist friend challenged something I said on Facebook in reference to the alleged fine tuning of the universe — a theory proposed and supported by a rather impressive collection of experts in the field of physics.
The problem with that complaint is I’m not the one who claimed the universe was fine tuned both to exist and support life in the first place. Fine tuning isn’t my theory. If anyone should be asked to defend the idea of fine tuning, it should be Sir Martin Rees.
In his book Just Six Numbers, Rees described six values, which he claimed any of which, given the slightest variation from current value. it would cause the universe to collapse upon itself.
Rees himself said,
These six numbers constitute a ‘recipe’ for a universe. Moreover, the outcome is sensitive to their values: if any one of them were to be ‘untuned’, there would be no stars and no life. Is this tuning just a brute fact, a coincidence? Or is it the providence of a benign Creator? I take the view that it is neither. An infinity of other universes may well exist where the numbers are different.
For the record, these six cosmological “constants” are as follows:
- omega (value=1) to represent the amount of matter in the universe.
- Epsilon (value=0.007) represents the degree to which atomic nuclei are bound together.
- “D” is the number of dimensions (value=3).
- “N” is the strength of electrical forces that bind atoms, divided by the force of gravity:(value=1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).
- “Q” is a number that represents two fine-tuned fundamental energies (value=1/100,000).
- Lambda (value=0.7) represents a measurement of anti-gravity in the universe.
If Rees is correct and the universe is indeed fine-tuned to the degree Sir Roger Penrose has calculated, the relative probability that the Big Bang would have produced this universe from absolutely nothing is approximately 1 in 10 to the 300th power, which is an astronomical small fraction of a single percentage point.
Furthermore, it’s very important to note that the probability problems of an atheistic worldview merely begin with creation of the universe.
One might attempt to argue that separate and apart from the “improbability” of the Big Bang is the improbability of inflation, and I wouldn’t quibble the argument too long. There are simply too many compounded improbabilities to consider that prohibit the focus our attention to be on just one or two of them. Stephen Hawking described the sensitivity of the inflationary period immediately following the Big Bang thusly:
First, why was the early universe so hot? Second, why does it look the same at all points of space and in all directions? Third, why did the universe start out with so nearly the critical rate of expansion to just avoid recollapse? If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million-million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present state. On the other hand, if the expansion rate at one second had been larger by the same amount, the universe would have expanded so much that it would be effectively empty by now. Fourth, despite the fact that the universe is so uniform and homogenous on a large scale, it contains local lumps such as stars and galaxies. These are thought to have developed from small differences in the density of the early universe from on region to another. What was the origin of these density fluctuations? The general theory of relativity, on its own, cannot explain these features or answer these questions.
Now I won’t pretend to know a specific statistical value to assign the improbability that inflation would so precisely manage to begin and end so conveniently from our perspective, but it should be safe to say the odds of a fine tuned universe produced by the Big Bang would be extraordinarily low and were not improved by the fact the first event required this expansionary period for success.
In other words, the success of this universe required both fine tuning AND inflation.
The Big Bang could have occurred without inflation, but this universe would no longer exist. Conversely, inflation could not have occurred without the Big Bang, and the need for inflation to create this universe.
The extraordinarily cynical atheist might ask why God didn’t get the Big Bang right in the first place? Why was the inflation period even needed to get the universe to proceed according to plan?
My reply to such a query would be if you have a problem with Hawking’s analysis of inflation, you should address those concerns to him. Likewise, if you have issues with how God orchestrated the origin of the universe, you should ask Him.
However, if you have questions about the probability problem as described, specifically how the calculations of much smarter people are being utilized, those questions may be addressed to me and I’ll do my best to answer them.
Our probability problems haven’t ended with the fine-tuned Big Bang and inflation.
We also have the problem of abiogenesis, the origin of life, and then its diversity.
Two-time Nobel Prize-winning chemist and physicist Ilya Prigogine suggested that the probability of abiogenesis could be due to random chance was zero. Personally, though, I don’t like extreme values that imply certainty or assert knowledge lacking facts in evidence.
Conversely, if the probability of abiogenesis were claimed to be 100 percent, we should see incontrovertible and reproducible evidence that life can be artificially created in the lab–essentially proving that abiogenesis was only a series of chemical reactions that occurred due to random good luck. However, Prigogine was apparently saying just the opposite — that we’ll never be able to prove the origin of life was possible due only to good luck.
For the sake of argument, I would propose we accept a “low” value of probability to represent the improbability of abiogenesis. It should be greater than zero, so I would propose that the calculation result of Penrose could be borrowed. The probability of abiogenesis cannot be greater than the probability of the universe that facilitated an origin of life event. It’s probably much lower, but we’re already talking about some unbelievable good luck.
Physicists have proposed alternatives to supernatural creation of the universe such as multiverse theory that specifically attempt to address the grotesque improbability everything that has allegedly happened according to their theories and calculations has been by accident.
However, the multiverse only attempts to resolve the improbability of a fine-tuned universe, not even inflation or the subsequent, compounded improbability of life spontaneously generated in this highly improbable universe.
Nobel Prize winning biologist George Wald had this to say about the hypothesis called abiogenesis:
The reasonable view was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position. For this reason many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous generation as a “philosophical necessity.” It is a symptom of the philosophical poverty of our time that this necessity is no longer appreciated. Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing…one has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.
The problem with Wald’s comment is probability. His statement seems to be committing what philosophers would call a post hoc fallacy. Wald basically said our choices are that God did or did not create life.
The only alternative he can offer to the special creation of life is spontaneous generation, and he clearly seems be agreeing with Prigogine to say it’s impossible. Then he completely contradicts himself to say he believes in something he knows can’t be true, apparently only because of his atheistic worldview.
Wald apparently realizes the only true alternative to incredible serendipity is an act of deliberate intent in creation by a supernatural God.
It seems that most people approach the probability problem backwards, in part because the biologists who are atheists, meaning almost of them, have decreed that evolution is no longer a scientific theory, but a proved fact.
No sane person can deny that sexual reproduction of two members of the same species will not produce clones. The offspring will vary slightly in their genetic composition.
Indeed, when we compare humans to chimpanzees and bonobo apes, the appearance of common descent seems virtually inarguable. Genetically and morphologically speaking, humans appear to be fur-less apes.
The problem with that idea is extrapolation, taking Darwinian natural selection all the way back in time to abiogenesis. In doing so, we must accept, as Richard Dawkins has written, that:
Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eyewitnesses to the Holocaust. It is the plain truth that we are cousins of chimpanzee, somewhat more distant cousins of monkeys, more distant cousins still of aardvarks and manatees, yet more distant cousins of bananas and turnips…continue the list as long as desired.
The problem with calling evolution a fact is that the only way we can be related as cousins to bananas and turnips is natural selection via sexual reproduction.
In other words, some living organism that was neither turnip nor human had sex with another member of its alleged species, and its offspring through many generations, mutated through sex into both plants and animals.
This alleged fact of evolution cannot be observed. Time is the magic ingredient that creates the great diversity of life, instead of God.
That is the argument from descent. The only conceivable alternative is that we are related by design. The funny thing is, humans created the concept of time.
So Time, the magical god of evolution, is truly a human invention.
What again would seem to be, at least on the surface infinitely more probable as an explanation to a universe produced by blind luck, inflation for no good reason, abiogenesis that seems impossible, and magical sex would be a form of supernatural intelligence far superior to any human intellect, even the collective of human intellect.
Like the atheist advocate of evolution theory, can I boldly claim that the existence of God is a known fact? No. That would make me a liar.
And I can’t even prove beyond all doubt that Stonehenge wasn’t accidentally built by Time.
Hi,
I read the new blog post and I have a couple of comments. Firstly, I’m still waiting for some justification for excluding the possibility of a purposeless, non-random cause for the universe. Does Rees address this in his book? This seems crucial as it has a huge impact on the probability argument.
Secondly, a heads up on your George Wald quote: it’s a quote mine. In fact, it’s such a well-worn quote mine that it has ended up in the “Quote Mine Project” at http://www.talkorigins.org . The quote is taken from an article in Scientific American, August 1954, (vol. 191), pages 44-53. With a carefully placed snip, the quote-miner has made it look like George Wald admits to believing something he knows to be impossible. What’s really going on is that Wald is using a rhetorical device to set up a discussion about probabilities.
The very next sentence, which was conveniently removed, reads:
“It will help to digress for a moment to ask what one means by “impossible.””
The last three sentences in the article sum up just how “impossible” Wald thinks abiogenesis is:
“The important point is that since the origin of life belongs in the category of at-least-once phenomena, time is on its side. However improbable we regard this event, or any of the steps which it involves, given enough time it will almost certainly happen at least once. And for life as we know it, with its capacity for growth and reproduction, once may be enough.”
In other words, the quote-miner has, by removing the end of the text, made Wald say something he isn’t actually saying. Quote-mining is a despicable practice. I would hold it to be more contemptible than lying, as the quote-miner isn’t even prepared to stand by his own words, preferring instead to twist someone else’s words to alter their intended meaning. I trust you used this quote in good faith. I also trust you will acknowledge on your blog that this was an edited and misleading quote.
Thirdly, I thought there was something off with this decription from your blog: “In other words, some living organism that was neither turnip nor human had sex with another member of its alleged species, and its offspring through many generations, mutated through sex into both plants and animals.”
Not being an expert in the field, I consulted the all-knowing Dr Google and he tells me that our current best estimate is that the last common ancestor of plants and animals was a single-cell eukaryote who lived around 1.5 billion years ago. This would have been hundreds of millions of years before the earliest evidence of sexual reproduction in eukaryotes.
Finally, it seems you’re sticking to your dichotomy of purposeful design or pure luck. Going back to my rock analogy, I would still like an answer to my question: does the rock fall towards Earth’s center of gravity every time because of sheer luck or by purposeful design?
Since gravity is one of the six cosmological factors that Rees identified and suggested were fine tuned, it would fall under the “by design” category, naturally.
I hope that does finally answer your question to your satisfaction.
In regard to the quote mine allegation, the quote was faithfully rendered and the reference properly cited in my book. I don’t dispute that Wald was trying to say something else, but the word “impossible” catches my attention when scientists use it. Did you find something that also claimed Prigogine was being taken out of context?
The “as long as it’s possible” argument is the same Dawkins made in the video shared yesterday and the link in the article above. I fail to see how that advances the argument for atheism or somehow makes the argument superior to the one I’ve assembled.
Just because the majority of scientists who are atheists would disagree with me doesn’t bother me in the least. The only thing I really care about is truth. What is true?
As far as referencing the quote and “clearing” up any misunderstandings on my blog, we’ll see. First I should have to dig up a copy of Scientific American 1959 and read the article again.
But I also think I’ve made it abundantly clear that people like Rees will not agree with how I’ve used his argument for fine tuning. I’ve never pretended otherwise, and I’m quite reticent to issue apologies if I haven’t done anything wrong.
I’m pretty good about saying so when I know I have, and will gladly issue corrections of fact as necessary. Since to the best of my knowledge I didn’t excerpt the quote to deliberately twist meaning with the use of ellipsis, I’m making no promises. Just because you don’t like something I’ve written or a point I’m making is no reason to issue a retraction, especially since earlier in the article I belabored the point of not accepting “impossible” or certitude as a probability.
I accept the possibility is ridiculously low to the point of absurdity, but secular magic is theoretically possible, I’ve always conceded.
It’s also highly improbable..
The Wald quote is from your book? I’m assuming you did your due diligence and checked the original source for the quote before publishing? So how did you end up with a quote truncated at the exact same place as the edited and misleading quote shown at the Quote Mine Project?
As for Prigogine, I would agree with him that the probability of abiogenesis happening by random chance is zero (or very close to it). On the other hand, I’m not aware of any scientist in the field who suggests that it happened by random chance. What is suggested is that it happened through chemistry and biophysics, neither of which are governed by random chance but by thermodynamics (if chemical reactions happened randomly, there would of course be no science of chemistry).
This brings me to the question you haven’t answered: on what grounds do you exclude the possibility of purposeless, non-random causes for the universe (and the origin of life)?
With one question you’ve basically asked, so what’s in your book?
The offer is a standing one.
You want to know why I rule out chance…I don’t rule it out completely. In fact, I don’t technically identify myself as theist, but theist-agnostic. There are many questions I don’t know how to answer, even if I assume all the books I’ve read about science have basically told the truth, because my argument is based largely on MY interpretation of the scientific evidence.
There seems to be some criticism that my idea uses information produced by others to reach conclusions those others would not support. How else can dissenting opinions be expressed?
If I rejected the work of Penrose and said this universe was a 50/50 proposition, and then life the same odds, even though there is no reason to do so, as my article suggest — even if I did, what would tip the scales in my favor are what I call “positive” evidence of supernatural phenomena — specifically the corroborated veridical NDE experience.
This article I wrote describes multiple examples of the phenomena from one basic experience of a 4 year old boy.
http://www.southernprose.com/2014/12/27/heaven-is-for-real/
This video describes probably the best example, the NDE of Pam Reynolds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R654H_qOvA
These are but two of MANY examples of corroborated veridical NDE events. In contrast to the abiogenesis argument that “it only had to happen once,” the argument here clearly is “it has happened innumerable times.”
As opposed to no matter how unlikely, we should believe the near impossible, here is a substantial and growing body of evidence of dualism ,suggesting the mind is a supernatural entity and the brain a physical one that may separate at death or when the body is under severe duress.
The ability to investigate and verify the claims after the fact and prove the medical conditions via records and doctor testimony is pretty powerful stuff, in my opinion.
No, I’m not asking why you rule out chance, I’m asking you why you rule out non-chance causes that are not by design. You keep repeating that the only options are design and luck and I want to know how you know that. I really don’t know how to make it any clearer.
Using other people’s ideas to support your own is fine – as long as you correctly portray the views of these other people. You clearly didn’t in the case of Wald and I was sort of expecting you to rectify this.
As for NDE:s I can’t really comment. The claim of dualism is obviously going to need lots of supporting evidence considering all the evidence we have for various aspects of the mind being not only tied to the physical brain but to specific parts of the physical brain: memory, emotions, perception, personality, language and even such specific things as face recognition. Do you have any links to controlled studies?
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be dense. It’s been an extremely long day and I’m still trying to get work done on the novel in progress. I will continue to monitor this thread and respond, but it will be about 24 hours before there’s another reply after this one.
I guess I’m a little stumped for what options you think might exist that are “non-chance causes” because I’m afraid I don’t know what we’d be talking about that extended beyond all the issues I mentioned as probability related problems to answering an existential questions, Remember, we’re not just talking about the fine tuned Big Bang, but inflation, abiogenesis, and even the origin of species, I don’t see how you can completely eliminate God and good luck, when those seem to be necessary in some form or fashion. And I also don’t know how I could be any more clear about the nature of the problem as a whole. That’s why I call it “The Big Picture” argument.
I don’t know how you misrepresent what someone has said by quoting them verbatim. I believe I made it emphatically clear in the case of the Wald quote and virtually every other that when Hawking says “God” he’s not really serious. When Einstein said “God does not play dice” he wasn’t talking about the same thing I am.
You don’t want the free copy of my book, but you want to know how the quotes are used, attributed, and qualified. At some point, I’m afraid I’m going to have to focus on writing, and ask you to read more.
Until tomorrow night, I will look forward to your next correspondence. In the meantime, duty calls.
If you would give me an example or two of what non chance options that also aren’t the product design might be, I would appreciate it very much.
By the way, it’s design versus descent. It’s God versus good luck. But not design versus good luck. At least, that’s the way I’ve been framing it. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll have time to decide whether or not I was splitting hairs to mention that distinction.
Hope I wasn’t nitpicking. My mind is currently elsewhere.
No rush, take your time.
As an example of a non-chance cause I’ve offered gravity, which is clearly not random and to my knowledge doesn’t show any evidence of being purposefully designed. You say it is, so let’s take it from there: how do you know? How would you demonstrate that gravity could not be a purposeless force?
I could have used lots of other examples: chemical reactions (which are clearly predictable, or there wouldn’t be any chemical industry), atomic physics (which is so predictable we can use it to make the most precise clocks known to man), nuclear physics (which we have such a good handle on we can use it for energy) etc.
Nature isn’t random, it’s decidedly non-random and predictable. This is why we’re able to study it through science. From this perspective, your insistance that the only options are design or luck (or God or luck, if you will) makes absolutely no sense at all to me. If the forces of nature we know are non-random, why would you assume that forces we don’t know (like the ones that may have caused the universe) are random? Of course you can claim that the forces of nature are God’s work but if you want me to accept that as anything more than a faith claim, you need to provide the evidence.
I really don’t understand why I need to explain to you how the quote misrepresented Wald. He used the word “impossible” rhetorically and then explained why abiogenesis is not impossible. The quote-miner deliberately removed this explanation – leaving Wald saying abiogenesis is impossible, when it’s quite clear that’s not what he thinks. Are you going to tell me this is a fair representation of Wald’s views?
I’m sorry. I don’t think I was very clear.
I meant a blind force we might reasonably expect would exist in the absence of matter as we know it. Does gravity exist without matter? Is gravity a cause or an effect?
The catalyst for the Big Bang could have been when God spoke and said, “Let there be light.”
There’s actually even a reason in Pam Reynold’s more fantastic alleged experience to give that thought some credibility and consideration. But I would have some conceptual difficulties in singling out one of several known factors in the shaping of this universe also becoming the force that causes something this incredible to occur.
Can gravity create gravity? That seems to be a circular argument.
I’m not going to split hairs or quibble with you on the issue of quote mining, which for the record when it comes to the Bible, atheists are true masters of doing. Wald used the word ‘impossible.’ If he didn’t mean it, he shouldn’t have said it. As a writer, I’m not sloppy with my word choice because I’ve seen firsthand how someone can twist your words to mean something you weren’t really trying to say. But I’m not going to argue about the difference between “impossible” and “theoretically possible, but extraordinarily unlikely.”
I really do have work to get done, and I make NO money off Counterargument for God, because I give away so many copies. It was a labor of love, and I’ll love you enough to offer you a copy, but not so much that I’ll humor you in the comment section of my blog indefinitely.
If you have a blind force that isn’t luck that could reasonably explain the origin of the universe, inflation, abiogenesis, etc. then I will listen patiently and read carefully what you have to say.
But ‘gravity’ isn’t going to cut it, in my opinion. It doesn’t give you something from nothing.
It isn’t a ToE.
I used Wald’s quote. I’ve offered you my book. You don’t seem to want to read it; you want me to spend hours and hours of my time trying to personally convince you that I know what I’m talking about and I simply don’t have enough free time at the moment. If you condescend to read my book and still feel you have a legitimate gripe about the context and manner in which it was used, then I’ll consider a revised edition with correction.
But I’m afraid the fact you don’t like the way it is used may not make the usage invalid.
I wasn’t suggesting that gravity is the cause of the universe. You asked for an example of a purposeless, non-random cause and I gave you one. I also asked you a question: how do you know gravity is not a purposeless force?
In other news, I just found this YT clip which looks like a good summation of the fine-tuning argument (Rees makes an appearance):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpIiIaC4kRA
Note that the makers of the video present this as a problem with not two but three solutions: necessity, chance or design. It’s the “necessity” part I’ve been trying to get at in our discussion, so obviously I was mostly interested in how they treated this option.
Firstly, I don’t really like the term “necessity” and the implication that this alternative means that the universe had to be life-permitting. All that is needed to counter the notion of fine-tuning is some kind of constraint that limits the total range of possible universes.
So how do the video makers exclude the “necessity” option? By making the blanket statement that the constants and quantities are not determined by the laws of nature. Well, this may be true for the laws of nature we know about but how can we know there aren’t other foundational principles that we’re not aware of that restrict the range of possible universes?
It seems the argument against “necessity” relies on absence of evidence being evidence of absence. This really isn’t good enough if you want to make a compelling argument for fine-tuning. As long as the proponents of the argument haven’t demonstrated that there could not be any purposeless force or principle that restricts the range of possible universes, they haven’t made the case for fine-tuning.
Your defense of the Wald quote is simply absurd. You have used a quote that has been edited to make Wald say the opposite of what he’s actually saying – and you don’t see anything wrong with that? Seriously? If the quote in your blog is the same as the one in your book, what would reading your book change? It’s a fraudulent quote – there’s just no way around it.
While I have enjoyed our conversation, I’m afraid the constraints of time are going to limit our future interaction. You may have the last word, after this response.
I’m not going to bother defending or even discuss a WLC You Tube video. Honestly, I had no idea who the guy was before my book had been written. We are making the same basic cosmological argument because we’ve reached similar conclusions based on logic.
I did learn from his that the argument is supposed to be called “Kalam” but I didn’t bother learning why or finding out what the word is supposed to mean. I know enough to form my Big Picture.
No offense, but you don’t seem to understand the purpose of writing my book. It isn’t to convince any one atheist to convert to my “beliefs” because you aren’t going to have them preached to you in any church in America. Likewise, you won’t find them taught in any classrooms.
You seem very intent to isolate and focus on certain narrow aspects of my “Big Picture” rather than looking at the actual big picture itself. You want to challenge my argument with one of incredulity but based on ignorance of what my actual argument entails.
No offense, but that seems a little lazy to me.
With all due respect, your approach to this conversation simply isn’t going to work well for me. My argument requires a 400 page book to make. I’ll give you a free copy, but I won’t argue the book in the comments section one piece at a time, with you cherry picking the pieces you want to talk about. You can’t really talk much about airplanes if you’re really only interested in the wings.
I also have zero interest in splitting hairs on one of about 150 attributed quotes in my book. The Wald quote is such a miniscule part of my overall argument that it’s absurd to belabor whether or not my usage of the quote took Wald out of context.
Accusations of fraud are pretty serious stuff. It’s the sort of accusation that leads me away from cordial discourse and into more anger-driven rhetoric, which is useless and unproductive.
This is my final word on Wald. I’m posting the entire section from my book where the quote is used to show the world that I did not distort his POV as an atheist to make him an advocate of creationism in any form or fashion.
I do wish you the best, and as long as your comment is not a personal insult, you shall have the last word. I’m not going to both fixing the formatting issues that arise from cut-and-paste.
You should have taken the free book offer. It’s still good, but I’ll have to keep reading comments to know you want it, and I don’t plan to respond again.
In parting, I’ll offer you this video as a gift — I’m only about halfway through, but it sounds like this guy is articulating my argument and preparing TED people for a secular twist on it.
He’s very interesting so far.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORUUqJd81M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORUUqJd81M
BOOK EXCERPT BELOW
————————————————
Bias
Harvard University biology professor and Nobel laureate Dr. George Wald admitted to scientific bias, saying,
“The reasonable view was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position. For
this reason many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous generation as a “philosophical necessity.” It is a symptom of the philosophical poverty of our time that this necessity is no longer appreciated. Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing…one has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.”90
Once again, the desire to implement theological cleansing leads a prominent scientist and Nobel Prize winner to conclude that spontaneous generation, though impossible, is more likely than creation of an organism by a supernatural intelligence. Special creation by a supernatural intelligence, by definition, would be using materials that were spontaneously generated. We are left not debating whether or not spontaneous generation happened, but whether or not there was an underlying cause for all that we see and know. Considering the end result, it’s difficult to argue that there isn’t some sort of plan, even if we don’t understand it.
The universe isn’t simply random matter scattered all over the place; it’s organized into galaxies and solar systems. Life isn’t simply a collection of molecules that occupy space, but organized into organisms, phyla, species, even ecosystems and food chains. Is it possible that all of this happened by luck? Just about anything is possible. Is it more probable than happening by intent?
No. Franklin Harold also wrote,
“Of all the unsolved mysteries remaining in science, the most consequential may be the origin of life. This opinion is bound to strike many readers as overblown, to put it mildly. Should we not rank the Big Bang, life in the cosmos, and the nature of consciousness on at least an equal plane? My reason for placing the origin of life at the top of the agenda is that resolution of this question is required in order to anchor living organisms securely in the real world of matter and energy, and thus relieve the lingering anxiety as to whether we have read nature’s book correctly. Creation myths lie at the heart of all human cultures, and science is no exception; until we know where we come from, we do not know who we are. The origin of life is a stubborn problem, with no solution in sight…Scientists feel vulnerable to the onslaught of believer’s certitudes, and so we proclaim our own. In reality, we may not be much closer to understanding genesis than A.I. Oparin and J.B.S. Haldane were in the 1930s, and in the long run, science would be better if we said so. After all, the unique claim of science is not that it has all the answers but that it knows the questions, and will not compromise its commitment to the rational search for truth.”91
Yes, Dr. Harold, we should rank the theories and hypotheses required for the Big Picture with equal importance. Abiogenesis is just as important to consider as Darwinian natural selection or the Big Bang theory. And it is a stubborn problem, requiring enormous good luck.
Without abiogenesis, life would not exist, and could not evolve. Physicist Lawrence Krauss boldly claimed,
“Now few biochemists and molecular biologists doubt that life can arise naturally from nonlife, even though the specifics are yet to be discovered.”92
Really! It is remarkable to think few biochemists and molecular biologists have no doubt about that something happened that they cannot observe, reproduce, or claim to understand.
The devil is in the details
[90] Wald, George. “The origin of life”. Page 46. Scientific American. August 1954. Digital.
[91] Harold, Franklin. The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms, and the Order of Life. Pages 235–6. Oxford. Oxford University Press. 2001.
Thank you for the excerpt from your book but I’m afraid it simply underlines the problem. You use the Wald quote specifically to set up the argument that he’s confessing to bias by admitting that he’s ready to accept something which he knows is impossible. Well, Wald doesn’t think abiogenesis is impossible. We know this because he explicitly says so later in the article. He also outlines why he doesn’t think so by using a probability argument.
Of course, your readers know nothing about this because that part of the article has been edited out. Consequently, they’re left with the impression that Wald, due to his bias, is prepared to cling to something he knows is impossible. This is obviously and blatantly false and I find it disturbing that you don’t see this.
You may not care what your critics think about you but you might want to consider the impact something like this could have on your prospects of having thoughtful, sincere and reasoned exchanges with people who don’t necessarily agree with you.
If you’re on a quest for the truth, as you say you are, wouldn’t those discussions be the ones you would cherish the most? Wouldn’t you appreciate the chance to test your arguments against opposing ideas and hopefully minimize the risk of getting trapped in confirmation bias (which can easily happen if you confine yourself to a circle of people who already egree with you)?
I know I do and that’s the reason I’m here having a discussion with you. However, your unapologetic use of quote mines to support your argument is, I have to admit, a bit of a show-stopper for me so I guess this is indeed a good time to end the exchange.
Unfortunately, I was going to let the reader have the last word, but I cannot allow a false accusation to stand without further clarification and rebuttal.
In regard to the charge that the George Wald quote in question was taken out of context, a search of the Talk Origins archive cited a different Wald quote from a different article in a different issue of Scientific American. The “quote mining” project mentioned this specific quote with citation:
“There are only two possibilities as to how life arose. One is spontaneous generation arising to evolution; the other is a supernatural creative act of God. There is no third possibility. Spontaneous generation, that life arose from non-living matter was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others. That leaves us with the only possible conclusion that life arose as a supernatural creative act of God. I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible; spontaneous generation arising to evolution.” (Wald, George, “Innovation and Biology,” Scientific American, Vol. 199, Sept. 1958, p. 100)
The problem is my quote came from a different source. Mea culpa — I should have posted the citation from my book when I posted the quote that upset my friend so much:
[90] Wald, George. “The origin of life”. Page 46. Scientific American. August 1954. Digital.
Different article, issue, etc. but same George Wald.
Actually, both quote mines are from the same article in Scientific American 1954, (vol. 191). The reference in the quote from your last post is wrong – the talkorigins.org article specifically points this out. The quote you used in your book is called “Quote #4.19” at the Quote Mine Project and is described here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part4-2.html