Wednesday, December 11, 2002

Mark Twain takes a humorous potshot at the Genesis creation story in his "Diary of Adam and Eve" when he has Eve worrying over the vulture's appetite. After all, he seems to have been designed to dine on carrion, but death doesn't make its entrance until act three. "What did the vulture eat before there was death?" "Did Adam have a navel?" (Quick! Yes or no?) "How could Jonah breathe in a whale's stomach?" These are "Village Atheist objections" the sorts of skeptical challenges that the Village Atheist throws down as he stalks the local Parson.

Now it appears that Mr. Peter Duran has brought his formidable mathematical prowess to the task of measuring the Ark of Noah. His publishable conclusion: there is no way on earth that Noah could have squeezed so ponderous a cargo onto the Ark. Frankly, I fail to see the problem. Having worked in the past as a loader for UPS, I have come to see that it's all in the stacking.

Mr. Duran has offered a piece of advice to his correspondent, Jeremy: don't spend your time reading "junk" because you will use up time and energy that could have been spent on the "good stuff." I quite agree with this wisdom. I would like to add that fledgling apologists would be wise to discern Village Atheist objections, such as that urged by Mr. Duran, from truly serious challenges to Christian faith. Whether one can be sufficiently imaginative to offer a model for making sense of Noah's passenger list strikes me as peripheral.

More to the point, Mr. Duran suggests that "Creationism to any degree" requires the conclusion that "most sciences are wrong." Indeed, he insists that, "genetic engineering would be impossible if creationism were even remotely possible." And he ranks creationism with the daily horoscope and the psychic hotline. To embrace any form of creationism is apparently to assume the role of Elmer Gantry, shouting absurdities at Albert Einstein. Jeremy, these are challenges that are certainly worthy of your attention.

Now just how is Mr. Duran's argument supposed to go? What is meant by "creationism to any degree"? I believe the universe to be the creation of an infinite and personal Creator. Does this belief, by itself, entail that I should think that paleontologists are sinister and that plate tectonics is an underground conspiracy? And does my theistic commitment preclude my thinking that God may have employed lawful processes that are discoverable and, perhaps, repeatable, by careful human endeavor?

Perhaps Mr. Duran shares a widespread assumption about the nature of science: "good science," by definition, appeals exclusively to naturalistic explanations and thus rules out appeals to "design" a priori. "Creationism to any degree" violates this strict adherence to methodological naturalism. Creationists who appeal to divine activities as the best explanation of observed phenomena are akin to those who would posit leprechauns to explain why the book fell from the shelf. Tough-minded inquirers such as Mr. Duran know better: a naturalistic explanation waits in the offing and may be discovered by the patient investigator. I have several objections to the "good science is naturalistic" thesis, but for want of space, will discuss only one now and hope for a future opportunity to say more.

It seems possible in principle that the best explanation of a phenomenon may very well be obtained through appeal to intelligent design. Consider the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) project, as featured in the movie "Contact."

Suppose that researchers pick up a radio signal from deep space with a pattern that, with a modest bit of decoding work, yields a message: EATMORCHIKINSIGNDTHECOWZ. Would we think it reasonable for a skeptical scientist to rule out intelligence as a source and to hold out indefinitely for a model of explanation that appealed to chance? Would we think it a hallmark of rationality were she to insist that "simply because science presently lacks such a model is no reason to pounce on the intelligence hypothesis"?

Now suppose that, one fine morning, the world were to awaken to a message emblazoned in the skies and seen from all continents: DON'T MAKE ME COME DOWN THERE ­ GOD.

We might wonder whether such a phenomenon was the result of human intelligence (perhaps the Trinity Broadcasting Network has discovered a new use for their ample satellite equipment). We certainly would not attribute such a phenomenon to, say, chance solar flares or the like.

But should such messages continue (I REALLY MEAN IT THIS TIME GOD), and should such anthropocentric explanations be ruled out, would it be reasonable to insist that a truly "scientific" explanation would entail our ignoring the possibility that the message is of divine origin? (I suppose we might consider extraterrestrials with a truly wicked sense of humor.)

The inference to intelligent design is already part and parcel of a variety of scientific disciplines, including the forensic sciences (who dunnit?) and archeology (is this an artifact or just a rock?). Why suppose that the creationist's claim that natural phenomena are best explained by appeal to intelligent design is any different?

As a matter of fact, a great deal of ink has been spilled in recent decades concerning the apparent "fine-tuning" of our universe at its inception. In short, the fact that our universe came into being in such a way as to make life in any form possible is wildly improbable on a chance hypothesis. Roger Penrose, Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Oxford and Stephen Hawking's sidekick, calculates the odds of our universe forming without superintendence as requiring "... an accuracy of one part out of 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123."

Knowing that such a figure would be lost on the likes of me, Penrose illustrates just how wild this improbability is. What would it be like trying to write this number down in standard notation (a one followed by a bunch of zeros)? Even if we were to write a zero on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe and we could throw in all the other particles as well for good measure we should fall far short of writing down the figure needed.

Michael Turner, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, illustrates just how lucky we are to be here if there is no intelligent designer behind the scenes. He suggests that the precision of the fine-tuning of our universe "is as if one could throw a dart across the entire universe and hit a bulls eye one millimeter in diameter on the other side."

No wonder a scientist no less eminent than Fred Hoyle could conclude a common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintendent has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. I do not believe that any physicist who examined the evidence could fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce within stars. Mr. Hoyle is, I think, in no danger of turning to horoscopes or reading goat entrails. Here is a scientist's scientist who concludes that the hypothesis of design is rationally preferable to naturalistic chance explanations.

Those today who appeal to intelligent design as the best explanation of certain organisms offer an argument at the biological level that parallels the above arguments at the cosmological level: purely naturalistic explanations that preclude intelligent design are ultimately implausible. Whether the designer in question is identical to the being in whom Christians believe is, admittedly, a question that transcends science.

High school biology students need not bring their Bibles to class. But whether the evidence points to intelligence responsible for the phenomena in question (and, of course, an intelligence that is at least consistent with the object of theistic belief) strikes me as a good question that is safely within the purview of science.

Jeremy, don't believe people who tell you that "creationism to any degree" is unscientific, irrational or infantile.

Mark D. Linville

Fayetteville