Tag Archives: Science

Commentary

What should a Roman Catholic think about naturalism and evolution?

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Charles Pope on the Archdiocese of Washington web site. (H/T Joe Carter on First Things)

Excerpt:

It is common to experience a rather simplistic notion among Catholics that the Theory of Evolution can be reconciled easily with the Biblical accounts and with our faith. Many will say something like this: “I have no problem with God setting things up so that we started as one-celled organisms and slowly evolved into being human beings. God could do this and perhaps the Genesis account is just simplifying evolution and telling us the same thing as what Evolution does.”

There are elements of the truth in this sort of a statement. Surely God could have set things up to evolve and directed the process so that human beings evolved and then, at some time he gave us souls. God could have done that.

The problem with the statement above is less theological than scientific because there is a word in that sentence that is “obnoxious” to evolutionary theory: “God.” The fact is that most Catholics who speak like this over-simplify evolutionary theory and hold a version of it that most Evolutionary Theorists do not hold. They accept the Theory of Evolution uncritically.

Yeah, because what evolutionists mean by “evolution” is that GOD HAD NO DETECTABLE EFFECT ON THE PROCESS. They mean that THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION OCCURRED ENTIRELY WITHOUT DIVINE INTERVENTION. That’s what evolution means – fully materialistic, fully random, no intelligence needed, emergence of all the diversity of life we see.

Now what this means is that God is excluded as a cause by evolutionary theory. It would be fine if evolutionists (as natural scientists) were either silent on the question of God. Or, perhaps if they simply stated that things may be acted upon by an outside force or intelligence but that is beyond the scope of their discipline. But that is not what is being said by most proponents of evolutionary theory. They are saying that biodiversity results MERELY from natural selection and random (i.e. non intended or non-purposeful) genetic mutations. They are saying that observable effects of biodiversity are wholly caused by something natural, random and without any ultimate goal or plan.

But a Catholic cannot accept all of this. Even if a Catholic wants to accept that things have evolved in some way (whether through macro or microevolution) a Catholic cannot say that this process is simply random, chance, blind, or with no purpose. We believe that God alone created all things, and that he sustains all things. Neither do we confess some sort of “deist” God who merely started things off and then lets them take their own course. Rather, God sustains and carries out every detail.

Joe Carter adds:

In my experience, most people haven’t considered the issue of how the theological and scientific claims can be compatible. For instance, to be a “theistic evolutionist” in the sense that modern scient will accept, requires one to adhere to polygensism (the theory that Adam was not one historical man but, rather, a euphemism for “mankind”). That position, however, is not compatible with the teachings of the Bible, the Church, or of Jesus.

The dividing line between theists and non-theists is as follows: did God act in history in a way that his creative agency and intelligent agency is discernable to us using the objective methods of science? Atheists (and theistic evolutionists) say that God’s creative agency and intelligent (selection/sequencing) agency is neither necessary to explain what we observe in the universe, nor are the effects of agency detectable through science. Theists (and deists) say that God’s creative agency and intelligent agency is necessary in order to explain what we observe in the universe, and these effects of agency are detectable through science.

That is the dividing line. I don’t how I could be much clearer.

News

Why does the news media exaggerate some scientific discoveries?

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What does it take for a planet to be habitable by complex life?

Excerpt:

Complex life in particular probably needs many of the things that we Earthlings enjoy: a rocky terrestrial planet similar in size and composition to the Earth, with plate tectonics to recycle nutrients, and the right kind of atmosphere; a large, well placed moon to contribute to tides and stabilize the tilt of the planet’s axis. That planet needs to be just the right distance from the right kind of single star, in a nearly circular orbit–to maintain liquid water on its surface.

It also needs a home within a stable planetary system that includes some outlying giant planets to protect the inner system from too many deadly comet impacts. That planetary system must be nestled in a safe neighborhood in the right kind of galaxy, with enough heavy elements to build terrestrial planets. And that planet will need to form during the narrow habitable window of cosmic history. (This is to say nothing of having a universe with a fine-tuned set of physical laws to make stars, planets, and people possible in the first place. But that’s another long and complicated story.)

That’s a tall order and it’s not even an exhaustive list of all the requirements.

Now keeping that list in mind, Christian apologist Peter Williams explains how the latest discovery of an exoplanet that might support life was presented to the media by the excited scientists.

Excerpt:

Nasa scientist and Nobel laureate in physics John Mather’s recent comment about ‘Earth-like’ planets was rather timely. Mather said: ‘We know there are earth-like planets out there, but what we don’t know is whether any of them are capable of supporting life.’ Well, Nasa have announced that: “If confirmed, [Gliese 581g] would be the most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered and the first strong case for a potentially habitable one.”

Thus far we have an unconfirmed report that Gliese 581g might be rocky (since it may be too small to be a gas giant – although the mass given is a minimum figure) and that it seems to be in the right ‘goldilocks’ temperature zone for liquid water – that’s if there is any water there and if the atmosphere is of the right composition!

Of course, the phrase ‘Earth-like’ is being used with some lattitude here: the gravity on Gliese 581g is higher than on earth (because its about three to four times the size of Earth). Moreover, the planet is ‘tidally locked’, meaning it doesn’t rotate (i.e. no seasons). This probably means that there’s only a narrow ‘twilight zone’ of the planet that’s even potentially habitable; assuming, of course, that the atmosphere (if it even has one) hasn’t frozen out over time to the night side of the planet!

At most (it’s hard to extrapolate here), this discovery may indicate that rocky planets in the habitable zone of stars aren’t all that rare; but consider this interesting passage from The Hiffington Post article on the discovery:

‘Vogt and Butler ran some calculations, with giant fudge factors built in, and figured that as much as one out of five to 10 stars in the universe have planets that are Earth-sized and in the habitable zone. With an estimated 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, that means maybe 40 billion planets that have the potential for life, Vogt said. However, Ohio State University’s Scott Gaudi cautioned that is too speculative about how common these planets are.’

There’s more to habitability – let alone the origin of life – than a chunk of rock at the right temperature!

This is Peter Pan science. They believe what they want to believe.

Many people want to believe that we are nothing special simplifying the world so that they don’t have to worry that maybe, somehow, they were created for a relationship with a cosmic Creator and Designer. Because if that were true,then they might not be free to just do whatever they want without any moral rules in order to make themselves happy. What they really want is to have all the benefits of being created by a loving God, without any of the responsibilities. They like sex, but they don’t like being told how to use it. So they jump at any news story that breaks down the evidence for a Creator/Designer. And they praise moral evil to the skies in order while bashing moral good down, in order to obliterate any vestiges of the idea that there might be any way that they ought to act. They don’t want to be accountable to God. They don’t want moral obligations.

Now look at the latest news from the New Scientist.

Excerpt:

Last month, a team of astronomers announced the discovery of the first alien world that could host life on its surface. Now a second team can find no evidence of the planet, casting doubt on its existence.

The planet, dubbed Gliese 581 g, was found to orbit a dim, red dwarf star every 37 days, according to an analysis by Steven Vogt of the University of California, Santa Cruz, Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in DC, and their colleagues.

Unlike the four previously known planets in the same system and hundreds of others found throughout the Milky Way galaxy, Gliese 581 g sits in the middle of its host star’s habitable zone, where temperatures are in the right range for liquid water to exist. It is also puny enough – weighing about three Earths – to have what is likely a rocky, solid surface.

But it might be too early to claim a definitive detection. A second team of astronomers have looked for signals of Gliese 581 g in their own data and failed to find it.

“We easily recover the four previously announced planets, “b”, “c”, “d”, and “e”. However, we do not see any evidence for a fifth planet in an orbit of 37 days,” says Francesco Pepe of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland. He presented the results on Monday at an International Astronomical Union symposium in Turin, Italy.

They wanted to believe we were cosmic accidents. Did they distort their data to prove what they wanted to believe? Like hiding the decline to “prove” that capitalism is evil?

We have to be careful about what some educated academic people want. Some educated academic people are sufficiently wealthy and powerful that they can avoid being hurt by most other people. So what they want is to pursue pleasure without being limited by moral rules. So they want to break them down because they view them as “speed bumps” on the road to pleasure in this life. Whatever they say has to be interpreted in light of this desire to get free from moral obligations and moral judgments by you and by your children. They want to normalize the idea that selfishness that causes damage to others is morally neutral. The breakdown of moral realism is what is behind many fads like Dan Brown, sex education, moral relativism, etc.

My previous article on what it takes to make a planet that is habitable by complex life.

Commentary

Does reading science fiction predispose people to atheism?

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This is an interesting idea that ECM thought of and shared with me in our conversations. I went around the office and tested some of the engineers who were atheists and found that ECM was 100% correct. But let me explain ECM’s thesis in brief.

ECM thinks that science fiction (made-up fantasy stuff) that people read when they are younger causes them to believe that the religion is anti-science and that the progress of science always disproves religion. The stories they read colors their views of science and religion for life, before they ever get to assessing evidence. And that’s why when we produce evidence for them in debates, they will believe in speculations rather than go where the evidence leads. So they believe that maybe unobservable aliens caused the origin of life, and that maybe the untestable multiverse theory explains the fine-tuning of cosmological constants, and that maybe this universe has existed eternally despite the well-supported Big Bang theory which shows that the universe began to exist. Maybe, maybe, maybe. They seem to think that untestable speculations are “good enough” to refute observational evidence – and maybe it’s because of all the science fiction that they’ve read.

Here’s an article in the American Spectator that talks a bit about it. (H/T Denyse O’Leary via ECM)

Excerpt:

A magazine I frequently write for (not this one) recently published a review of a book of essays advocating atheism. The reviewer pointed out with some enthusiasm that a large number of the contributors were science-fiction writers.

This left me somewhat nonplussed. I publish a good deal of science fiction myself, I have also read quite a lot of it, and I am quite unable to see why writing it should be held to particularly qualify anyone to answer the question of whether or not there is a God.

[…]Historically the contribution of the Catholic Church to astronomy was massive and unequalled. Without it astronomy might very well never have grown out of astrology at all. Cathedrals in Bologna, Florence, Paris, Rome and elsewhere were designed in the 17th and 18th centuries to function as solar observatories. Kepler was assisted by a number of Jesuit astronomers, including Father Paul Guldin and Father Zucchi, and by Giovanni Cassini, who had studied under Jesuits. Cassini and Jesuit colleagues were eventually able to confirm Kepler’s theory on the Earth having an elliptical orbit. J.L. Heilbron of the University of California has written:

The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions.

Science fiction is, by definition, fiction, that is, it deals with things which are the product of a writer’s imagination and are not literally true. In any event, what is and what is not science fiction is hard to define. Simply to say it is about science is meaningless, and while some science-fiction writers are qualified scientists, many are not. Probably even fewer are trained theologians.

Science fiction makes the mysteries of the universe seem easy to an atheist. Everything can be easily explained with fictional future discoveries. Their speculations about aliens, global warming and eternal universes are believed without evidence because atheists want and need to believe in those speculations. In the world of science fiction, the fictional characters can be “moral” and “intelligent” without having to bring God or the evidence for God into the picture. That’s very attractive to an atheist who wants the feeling of being intelligent and moral without having to weight actual scientific evidence or ground their moral values and behavior rationally. The science fiction myths are what atheists want to believe. It’s a placebo at the worldview level. They don’t want cosmic microwave background radiation – they want warp drives. They don’t want chastity – they want holodecks.

Why do people become atheists?

My theory is mainly that atheists adopt atheism because they want pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, without any restraints or guilt. They want to believe that sex without commitment has no consequences, especially a consequence like God judging them for it. Another contributing factor may be that atheists want to be thought of as smart by “the right people” – to sort of blindly accept whatever the “smart people” accept without really searching out reasons or dissenting views. They do this so that they are able to look down at some other group of people so they can feel better about themselves and be part of the right group – without actually having to weigh the evidence on both sides. And lastly, atheism may also be caused by weak fathers or abandoning fathers. But I think that ECM’s science fiction theory has merit, as well. I think that all four of these factors help to explain why atheists believe in a discredited worldview in the teeth of scientific progress.

I wonder if my readers would take some time out to investigate whether their atheist friends have been influenced by reading science fiction and whether they still read it. We really need to get to the bottom of why atheists are so hostile to science, morality, and reason. If we can also find out why they are so desperate to take on the views of people around them because of peer pressure, without caring to hear both sides of questions (e.g. – global warming), that would also be interesting.

Science fiction

Not science fiction