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September 08, 2005
The First and Great Question
Graham has a recent entry on "Intelligent Design". One thing that Graham does not address in his discussion of Intelligent Design/Evolution is the very beginning: Where did matter come from? and... How did that very first single cell organism come into existence to kick off the evolutionary process? I believe these questions need to be answered prior to attempting the distillation process of how complex organisms came into existence.
This is a tougher question to answer with science. Why? Because science deals with phenomena that can be observed or that can be reproduced. This is a problem. No human was alive to observe matter coming from nothing; nor did anyone see the birth of a simple organism. Furthermore, by applying the scientific method, these phenomena cannot be reproduced. Sure scientists have made unfathomable strides in understanding and manipulating the physical world; but they have never created anything "ex nihilo" or out of nothing. When you walk into a laboratory it is never an empty room... it is fill with exquisitely precise instruments and technology. When a scientist does something interesting in an empty room that will be news!
I too am a logical person, convicted by facts and hard science. However, in answering some of the most difficult questions in life, real science simply breaks down and we are left with simply our reason. Did matter come from nothing? and did life come from that matter? or did some Being with superior intellect and power create the world and all that is in it? That is the most basic question of life, and left with that question, I believe in a Creator.
Now we can talk about the complexity of the universe! uh... just not right now. :-)
Posted by harris at September 8, 2005 11:57 PM
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Comments
Hi Harris,
As far as the answer to the ultimate question goes - where did the universe come from - physicists are definitely trying to figure that one out!
Assuming that there are some basic rules from which everything else derives, if the choice was between something super-low-level such as "there is an everlasting quantum froth" versus "there is an everlasting super-powerful mega-being", I think the principle of Occam's razor would point towards the first option.
Cheers,
Graham
Posted by: Graham Glass at September 9, 2005 05:33 AM
It's a common misunderstanding that science only deals with things that can be directly observed by human eyes. Archeology would be pretty hosed if that were true, since much of what we know about ancient cultures is based on indirect evidence, like their trash. If you observe a garbage can full of twinkie wrappers, it's a reasonable assumption that a bunch of twinkies have been eaten. Of course, it's not direct proof (maybe the twinkies exploded on their own, etc) but Occam's Razor is a great help in these cases.
Most people forget that their own senses are "indirect observation", since what the brain perceives has been filtered through layers of pre-processing by our perceptual machinery. The most powerful observational tool of a scientist is their brain, not their eyes.
As to the origin of the universe, the question reflects more about the unsatisfying nature of some scientific answers than anything else. Science might give us evidence that the universe is an infinite series of collapse/expand cycles, with no beginning and no end, and it might even be true, but it's not _satisfying_. We want to know why, not have a mathmatical description of the process.
It's at that point, where we've left the goals of science behind and are addressing human feelings, that faith and religion enter the picture.
Adding religion into the mix before the point that science's explanatory power fails us leads to some pretty freaky misunderstandings (sun orbiting the earth, stars as little holes in the firmament, earth only 5000 years old, and so on)
On the up side, spending an evening playing with some evolutionary computation tools can give anyone a basic, intuitive understanding of the kind of things you can do with the processing power of DNA-like computational systems. So, unlike the origin of the universe, it's possible to get a reasonably satisfying explanation of how evolution works, and how the amazing complexity that is us evolved from the primal sludge :-)
Posted by: Christopher St. John at September 9, 2005 10:25 AM