Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

Stephen M. Barr

Part III: Is the Universe Designed?

Ch 9: The Argument From Design

p66 The Bible helped clear the way for modern science by clearing away "Fates and Furies, dryades and naiades, sun gods and gods of war, goddesses of sex and fertility" with its "severe monotheism".

p66 Proverbs 8:22-26, 30-31 impressive as an example of the view of God as wise, rational Creator.

p67 Other scriptures on the God of law, both for humans and for nature in general.

p67 Quote from E O Wilson on why Chinese didn't develop science

p67 Minicus Felix of the third century with his argument from design

p68 Calvin's Institutes and the classic Paley statement of design.

p69 Macauley design in nature

p69 Two kinds of design, Cosmic Design Argument and Biological Design Argument.

p69 discussion of structure - that inherent in form and symmetry and that "organic structure" consisting of the interdependence of working parts.

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

Stephen M. Barr

Ch 10 The Attack on the Argument from Design

p71 Pure Chance - monkey with the typewriter,

p72 Laws of Nature - orderliness required by the laws of physics, etc.

p73 Natural Selection - Alludes to Dennett and Dawkins,

p74 Origin of Life problem - complexity of the first primitive life form "elaborate structure, involving dozens of different proteins, a genetic code containing at least 250 genes, and many tens of thousands of bits of information."

p75 "How ironic that, having renounced belief in God because God is not material or observable by sense or instrument, the atheist may be driven to postulate not one but and infinitude of unobservables in the material world itself!"

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

Stephen M. Barr

Ch 11 The Design Argument and the Laws of Nature

p76 Two ways to think about the laws of nature. Bible- the existence of laws implies a law giver. Atheists: laws of nature prove that there is no need for God

p76 Pierre-Simon Laplace, asked by Napoleon why God was nowhere mentioned in his great treatise on celestial mechanics, replied "I have no need of that hypothesis." But Joseph-Louis Lagrange, physicist, when told this by Napoleon is reported to have said "Ah! But is such a beautiful hypothesis. It explains many things.".

p77 Uses hexagonal close-packed spheres as an order that arises from physical laws.

p78 "scientific accounts of natural processes are never really about order arising from mere chaos, or form emerging from mere formlessness. On the contrary, they are always about the unfolding of an order that was already implicit in the nature of things, although often in a secret or hidden way."

p79 "Order has to be built in for order to come out."

p79 "In science, order comes from order."

p79 box of spherical marbles vs a box of plastic spoon as comparison of what happens when each is tipped. Marbles are ordered because they had an inherent symmetry.

p80 In science, order comes from greater order

p84 Marbles to hex close packed is a "spontaneous symmetry breaking".

p87 The order in the heavens. Discusses observed patterns of planets, etc, then Kepler's Law, then to law of gravitation, conservation of momentum as deeper symmetries lying behind them.

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

Stephen M. Barr

Ch 12 Symmetry and Beauty in the Laws of Nature

p96 Geometrical symmetries, including the "golden mean"

p97f goes on to describe symmetries of elementary particles, unification of forces, supersymmetry

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

Stephen M. Barr

Ch 13 "What Immortal Hand or Eye?" Awesome chapter - waxes more eloquent than in previous chapters to my mind. Some very significant statements.

p105 Good summary of "symmetric structure" and "functional structure". "from ancient times, evidence for the existence of a consmic designer has been seem in the structure of the universe, or , in the words of Minucius Felix, in the 'order and law in the heavens and on earth.' We saw that there are two kinds of structure. One, which we called 'symmetric structure', is characterized by regularity, order, pattern, and symmetry. The other, which we called "organic structure", is characterized by a complex, functional interdependence of parts. We saw that the appearance of symmetric structure in natural phenomena can be explained using the laws of physics, as in the case of the growth of crystals or the formation of the solar system."

p105 "It is true that science explains order, but only by showing that it comes from some grander, more profound order, which it expresses in mathematical laws. "

p105-106 Quote from Zee, particle physicist. Role of symmetries in the current investigations of nature.

p107 Outlines investigation of whether the order seen can be obtained by chance, laws of nature, or natural selection to the exclusion of a Creator.

p107 "Can chance do it?"

p108 severe problem - even with vast number of universes, there is no explanation of why we live in a special, orderly universe. It is one very nearly perfect in terms of proceeding from mathematical rules.

p108 for 1000 gemstones that look perfect, all have detectable microscopic flaws so finding flaws just means looking at higher resolution.

p108 "yet scientists have studied the physical universe with instruments of astonishing precision; and while they quite often find anomalous behavior that does not fit the laws of nature as they think them to be, it has always turned out that these anomalies could be accounted for by some more beautiful law. The universe does not appear more and more flawed the more closely one looks at it, as one might expect if its regularity were a matter of luck. Rather, its fundamental patterns appear more and more wonderfully perfect the more closely they are examined."

p109 Herman Weyl quote deals with human suffering but flawless harmony in basic structure - pick up the quote when dealing with the problem of pain.

p109 "Is Natural Selection Enough" in realm of "organic structure"

p109 "most biologists think that Darwin succeeded in explaining organic structure in a completely natural way. This has led some of them to claim that Darwin has exploded the Argument from Design. However, there is a point that cannot be emphasized too strongly: Even if these biologists are correct, and Darwin has explained the formation of biological structure, that would at most affect one version of the Design Argument for the existence of God, namely the Biological Design Argument. It would leave completely untouched the Cosmic Design Argument, which takes as its starting point the structure of the universe as a whole. I have argued that this structure, and in particular the structure of the laws of physics, cannot, in the final analysis, be explained by some kind of theory of natural selection."

p109 Why he thinks that natural selection leaves the question open "Basically, the reason is that there is just not enough evidence to settle the issue one way or the other at the present time. There is a great deal of evidence - it seems to me to be overwhelming evidence - that evolution happened. What I mean by that is that there is a great deal of evidence pointing to the fact that all life on Earth evolved from a common ancestor. There is also a great deal of evidence that natural selection plays a large role in evolution. What is lacking is sufficient evidence to prove that natural selection by itself is capable of doing the whole job of driving evolution. On top of that, there are some discoveries in recent decades that make that job look a lot harder than it once did."

p110 Expands on that theme. Invokes Cambrian Explosion, complexity of bacterium, human brain - evolved from ape brain in five million years.

p110 "Why, then, are so many scientists so sure that natural selection is sufficient? Probably because they see no alternative that does not involve some divine superintendence of affairs, and to admit such a possibility would be, they think, "unscientific". My own view is that it is unsientific to go beyond the evidence."

p111 "Does Darwin Give "Design Without Design"?

p111 "marvelous patterns can arise "spontaneously" in nature as a result of the normal operation of the laws of physics. However, we also saw that this could only happen because of even more marvelous patterns in the laws of nature themselves. In other words, behind the remarkable phenomenon stood even more remarkable laws."

p111 "The same is true of evolution. Evolution, presumably, occurred through the normal operation of natural laws. But this was only possible, as I shall argue in the next chapters, because the laws of nature are themselves quite special. The biologist Richard Dawkins, referring to William Paley's 'watch argument', calls the universe the "Blind Watchmaker". The "watches" for Dawkins, are the intricate structures of living things. The universe, mindlessly following its mechanical laws, has succeed in crafting these astonishing structures by repeated trial and error. What Dawkins seems not to appreciate is that his Blind Watchmaker is something even more remarkable than Paley's watches. Paley finds a "watch", and asks how such a thing could have come to be there by chance. Dawkins finds an immense automated factory that blindly constructs watches, and feels that he has completely answered Paley's point. But that is absurd. How can a factory that makes watches be less in need of explanation than the watches themselves? Paley, if still alive, would be entitled to ask Dawkins how his Blind Watchmaker came to be there. Perhaps Dawkins would answer that it was produced by a Blind "Blind Watchmaker" Maker."

p111 "It is a remarkable thing that inanimate matter assembled itself into living organisms like dogs and cats and chimpanzees. The fact that it happened according to natural processes makes it no less remarkable; on the contrary, it only shows how remarkable the natural processes of our universe are. It is the same with sexual reproduction. Suppose someone told us of a technological breakthrough whereby a microscopic pellet of chemicals could be placed in an appropriate bath of other chemicals and spontaneously assemble itself into a video camera. or pocket calculator, or power tool. Would we not be astonished that such a thing was even possible, let alone that someone had achieved it? And yet, sexual reproduction is a more amazing thing by far. A little pellet of chemicals assembles itself into organisms that are far more sophisticated than anything human engineers can design or build. Humans can make a jumbo jet or a fighter plane, but are nowhere near to being able to make something as sophisticated as a housefly or a mosquito. "

p112 "And evolution is a far stranger thing even than reproduction. For what evolution means is that from a soup of very simple particles there emerged spontaneously all the complex entities that are capable of reproducing themselves. The entire genetic system by which organisms assemble themselves from microscopic seeds spontaneously assembled itself from a mere bath of chemicals."

p112 "Darwinian evolution, far from disproving the necessity of a cosmic designer, may actually point to it. We now have the problem of explaining not merely a butterfly's wing, but a universe that can produce a butterfly's wing."