Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Gerald Schroeder: The Science of God

I am currently refamiliarizing myself with Gerald Schroeder's The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom which was written in 1997. Schroeder is an applied theologian with a Ph.D. in physics from MIT.

His opening premise, if I understand him correctly, is superficially similar to that of Francis Collins' and John Polkinghorne's in that God has created a self-sustaining world. His approach to the evidence, however, is very different from theirs. He covers much of the same ground early that Hugh Ross did in his book The Fingerprint of God, and presents a good deal of evidence for the fine tunedness or "tweaking" that the universe. He writes:
As a scientist trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology I was convinced I had the information to exclude Him—or is it Her?—from the grand scheme of life. But with each step forward in the unfolding mystery of the cosmos, a subtle yet pervading ingenuity, a contingency kept shining through, a contingency that joins all aspects of existence into a coherent unity. While this coherence does not prove the existence of a designer, it does call out for interpretation. (p. 25)
He does, however, unlike Ross, invoke a potential problem in such a "tweaked universe" scenario: that such an argument is effectively argument from personal incredulity. As I argued with my wife last night, and as he puts it:
The design in nature's move toward life might be pure chance. Perhaps we are here because good fortune smiled and produced by chance the multitude of events needed to coax life from the chaos of the big bang. It would be something like winning a lottery for which a million people—even a billion—had purchased tickets. A miracle? Not really—someone had to win and you were the lucky person. (p. 26)
It is an argument he doesn't believe, however, because Paradoxically he then argues that modern physics and nature are based on the idea that the very, very, very unlikely never happens. This is difficult to square with any definition of nature and science that I have ever heard.

Schroeder takes a very different view of the debate between those who argue for a six-literal day creation and those who argue for an old-earth creation (4.5 billion year old earth). Here, he delves in relativity, arguing that it does not make sense to argue either of these perspectives because they are both correct. He writes:
CBR is the clock of the cosmos. Its wave frequency is the rate which the cosmic clock ticks. "the directly measurable coordinate along the line of sight (into space) is not time, but redshift (z)"—the ratio of CBR frequencies observed today. Just after the big bang, when the universe was vastly more compact, all the radiation spread throught today's huge universe was pressed within a small primordial space. the immense concentration of energy resulted in CBR temperatures and wave frequencies million upon million times greater than that of the frigid 2.73° of space today. The cosmic clock then "ticked" much more rapidly than it does today. (p. 61-62).
Using this logic, every creation day on earth took less and less time until all of the six days took up all of the fifteen billion years that the universe and the earth have existed. This means that the earth, created on day 3, is between 3.5 and 4.5 billion years old. In such a concordist view, the dispute over how old the universe is. There is now plenty of time for both views.

When it gets down to discussing biological life and evolution, Schroeder is comfortably in the intelligent design camp. Here, he invokes the "latent library" model of origins which posits that all early life had in it latent blocks of information waiting to be switched on at the right time. By his own admission, this flies in the face of the standard notion of accumulation of beneficial mutations to account for species change. In support of this model, he uses examples of morphological constraint and the formation of similar structures in different organisms, arguing that it would be almost impossible for these structures to have arisen independently through mutation. Here, his understanding of evolution seems to break down.

Like Michael Behe, he demands that all of the evolutionary change happen at once. This is a peculiar error that is common to these two and to William Dembski, who has posited this misconception of evolution several times. Consequently, his calculations show that when you multiply all of the probabilities of these evolutionary events occurring, the probabilities are astronomically small. Falling back on the familiar "random sequence of letters" example, he argues:
The only way random letter generation ha a prayer of producing meaningful sentences is if the programmer instructs the computer how to recognize meaningfulness and how to preserve it. The same may be said for random mutations in the genome producing useful strings of amino acids (proteins) and their preservation. But this supposes that nature knows what is good for it. (p. 103)
Such a scenario fails to account for the fact that rarely do beneficial traits arise all at once. This is similar to the METHINKSITISLIKEAWEASEL program of Richard Dawkins. Although flawed in its expression, Dawkins wanted to demonstrate that over time, given the fixation of beneficial mutations (correct letters), random changes in letters will produce meaningful output. Dawkins understood that this was a teleological scenario (he knew the outcome). As H. Allen Orr put it:
Start with a random sequence as before but i) randomly change each character that doesn't match the target sequence; ii) if a resulting character matches the target keep it and in the next round change only those characters that don't match. So, if we start with SATHINKS, at the next step we'll randomly change only the first two letters; and if those changes yield MQTHINKS, then at the next step we'll randomly change only the second letter. This two-step evolutionary algorithm of mutation plus selection arrives at the phrase METHINKS… with surprising speed
Schroeder argues that the compound eyes of different organisms could not possible have all arisen independently by chance through evolution but that they were guided in their formation. In truth, it is quite possible that each eye arose independently through the accumulation of beneficial mutations in similar environments. Evolutionary history is replete with examples of convergent evolution, from the New and Old World monkeys to the marsupial forms that are found in Wallacea. In both cases, you have a fossil record that records the evolutionary steps that led to the convergence. Where there is an ecological niche, adaptive radiation takes over.

His understanding of biology is also a bit peculiar. He writes:
Nature strives toward complexity because complexity carries with it survivability through intelligent adaptability. The simplest form of life, bacteria, lacks this feature. Though as a group bacteria have been on earth longer than any other form of life, as individuals they are not a success story.
Nature does not strive toward complexity, it strives toward adaptability. Many organisms have changed little in millions of years. Contrary to what he writes, these are success stories. Each one is marvelously adapted to its environment. Complexity is a byproduct of changing adaptation to changing environments. If the environment doesn't change, or changes little, organisms do not change.

Although he mentions the fossil record, much of it is glossed over. For example, he writes about the appearance of Neandertals and their overlap with modern humans but gives little notice to the myriad human fossil forms that precede Neandertals and the wealth of transitional forms encountered. This would present a set of evidence that would need to be explained. There are many other such sequences in the fossil record that go unmentioned as well.

The last half of the book deals with the creation of humans and Adam and Eve and weaves Talmudic and biblical passages together in an attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole. A persistent problem for the biblical interpretation that Adam and Eve were the first people is the evidence that humans have been on this planet in one shape or another for around 5 million years. Modern humans have been around for around 150,000 years. However, for the first two chapters of Genesis, there are a total of four people mentioned. Add the puzzling passages where the Bible clearly states that Cain knew his wife (who was that?) and then went and built a city. If there are no people around to build a city, who did he build it for?

Here, Schroeder invokes the Talmudic interpretation that, between the death of Abel and the birth of Seth, Adam and Eve split up for 130 years, during which time, Adam had relations with other women that did not have the spirit of God on them. These would have been the other humans on the planet, the "Cro-Magnons" that were present on the landscape. From this, we are to understand that all of human civilization up until the birth of Adam six thousand years ago was without the benefit of the Spirit of God—human animals, in Schroeder's words. One of the big problems, of course, in this reading is that it is selective in providing a beginning for the human soul in Adam (despite there being a large number of "humans" around that were God-created but which had no more importance than the animals) but failing to account for the flood story a scant two chapters later. Modern human occupation around Adam and Eve has been continuous in the Old World from 150,000 years ago and in the New World from 20,000 years ago. At no point in this occupation is there evidence for a world-wide flood. It seems odd for Schroeder to take such great pains to formulate a model putting Adam and Eve in relation to other humans only to not mention the story in which they get annihilated.

Ultimately, the book succeeds where Schroeder can stick to physics and he provides a truly unique perspective in the creation of the universe and the use of time dilation. Had he stopped there, the book would have been a highly engaging work which would have gotten an unqualified recommendation. As it is, like so many who espouse intelligent design, evolution is just too tempting a target to stay away from and, because he does not have a background in biology, he makes a hash of it.

Ironically, given his understanding of Adam's place in nature and his relationship to the "soulless" humans around him, Schroeder need not have even addressed evolution at all. He appears to include this section to bolster an argument that the history of life was teleologically driven toward humans. He has, however, failed to understand that there is nothing inherent in evolutionary theory that posits randomness. It is certainly true that there is a stochastic nature to mutation but that is true in the modern world as well as the prehistoric one.

Where evolution is not random is in the action of selection, gene flow and genetic drift. Those processes are what drive evolutionary change. Like so many other intelligent design promoters, Schroeder fails to see this.

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Now playing: Tal Wilkenfeld - The River of Life
via FoxyTunes

13 comments:

  1. I have enjoyed Schroeder's books in the past, although I don't think I have read this one. Thanks for the review.

    I take it that you do not believe that Adam and Eve (and their named offspring) were particular individuals.

    What then is your interpretation of the creation stories of Adam and Eve? Are they myths, or metaphors, or what?

    If they are myth, then why believe them any more than any other myth?

    If they are metaphors, then what are they trying to teach us about God and Humanity?

    Also, if God did not create man, what does that do to our fundamental belief in the natural rights of Man, which have always been founded on the belief that Man was created "Imago Dei"?

    "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."

    Does that statement even make sense within a Darwinian framework?

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  2. CGriffin9:46 AM

    While I am certainly not a physicist of Schroeder's training, I'm still tempted to call "bull" on a couple of his statements involving the CBR and time dilation.

    There have been a few different attempts at using time dilation to mesh 6 24 hour days on Earth with tens of billions of years in the rest of the universe. So far they've all been a pretty atrocious failure. (Humphrey's Starlight and Time, I'm looking at you!)

    Perhaps Schroeder gives more details which exculpate his bizarre statement which you quoted here, but I can't imagine what they would be as the quote you included is bizarre and dead wrong.

    A condensed universe with temperatures in the millions of years does not have a faster time than a universe spread out. If he's just talking about the rate at which redshift occurred, it's true that the CMB's frequency dropped at a much higher rate when the universe was smaller and hotter, but that has nothing to do with the passage of time.

    And, if he's going to posit that the Earth's time passed differently than the universe's time (somehow linked to the rate of the CMB's frequency change??? weird!), then the Earth would need to be in a cooled down section of the universe compared to everything else. How did that happen??

    And sort of like a major problem of Humphrey's risible book, how would our Milky Way galaxy form since it would also be in the "cooled" section of space and thus have the 1-day-equals-billions-of-years-else effect going on.

    Schroeder has some very bizarre sorts of stuff going on with his astronomy, from what I can tell from your excerpts. I'm not as good with the biology stuff, but it sounds like he's got that screwed up too.

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  3. I am not sure that I would disagree with Schroeder's 7- day calculation. It was one of the parts of the book that I found most interesting.

    His book the Science of God goes a long way to show how one can be both spiritual and scientific. It is a beautiful meld of the two.

    As for myths. A myth is a story told to explain a truth that can not otherwise be understood. I believe that Adam and Eve are myths because none of us can possibly understand the spiritual awakening of humanity. We can look at the science, but even that is based on assumptions that may in the future be discounted. Nobody can answer whether or not they were particular individuals.

    There are positive and negative forces in the world. They manifest physically (via charges), and ideologically (via morality). Adam and Eve explain how these forces first affected us.

    The story of Adam and Even is not any truer than another myth explaining a truism.

    The image of God is an interesting one. We need to define image. Is it a physical image we look at? Does it mean that God has two eyes, two ears, two legs, one nose (the typical animal image - human and otherwise), or does it mean our capacity to love, hate, show compassion, be egotistical (also animal - human or otherwise).

    If we look at evolution it seems that just about all animals throughout time (including the dinosaurs) have similar attributes - so perhaps all creation was created in His image...

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  4. Orr's got it wrong on the Weasel program. All letters are subject to mutation, not just the ones that don't match up with the target string. It's even possible for the program to start diverging away from the target string for a bit, but cumulative selection eventually works its magic.

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  5. CGriffin9:16 PM

    While I'm not a physicist of his caliber, the area of science I do know, studied, and have worked in is astrophysics. I haven't gotten my doctorates, but the errors it sounds like he is making are definitely undergrad errors that I can wrap my head around.

    I haven't read the book, and it's certainly possible he is doing something unique which makes a major break from past attempts at doing this, but from the quotes mentioned here I'm not inclined to offer that assumption.

    Dr. Humphreys of Starlight and Time is a physicist, but his book tries to do the same thing as Schroeder seems to be trying and everyone was able to point out myriads of fundamental and really basic errors. (which, of course, didn't stop Answers in Genesis from promoting it heavily, but even they have been moving it well to the background and avoiding using it in their latest talks and productions) Just because someone is a capable scientist in one area doesn't mean he's going to necessarily write quality work in another area, especially if the topic is something which has strong influences from other (philosophical, theological, etc) areas.

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  6. @Marie-Chantal said

    "I believe that Adam and Eve are myths because none of us can possibly understand the spiritual awakening of humanity."

    and

    "The story of Adam and Even is not any truer than another myth explaining a truism."

    At what point does the Genesis narrative switch from mythology to history, or does it ever?

    In your thinking, were any of the characters in Genesis real people who actually existed in history, or were they all mythological?

    If Adam was only a myth, then does it follow that his (so-called) progeny were myths as well?

    Adam = Myth
    Eve = Myth
    Cain = Myth
    Abel = Myth
    Seth = Myth
    Enosh = Myth
    ...
    Lamech = Myth
    Noah = Myth
    Shem = Myth
    ...
    Abraham = Myth
    Isaac = Myth
    Jacob = Myth
    ...
    David = Myth
    Solomon = Myth
    ...
    Jesus = Myth?

    If not, at what point in history do the characters switch from being merely mythological to actually historical? And by what criteria do we make such a judgment?

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    1. Anonymous12:23 PM

      Sir, it is impossible for any human to comprehend what he/she cannot even theorize, and theories are only theoretical to those who are incapable of accepting or proving otherwise, yet all things are possible with God (Matthew 19:26 & Mark 10:27), which is a fact the unbelievers cannot fathom, due to their arrogance and ignorance. All things were created through His Will, as so stated in Revelation 4:11. Jesus tried to relate to humans by using parables, and God made Him a little lower than the angels in order to do so (Psalms 8:5 and Hebrews 2:7&9), but most never understood what He was saying then, and the same is true today. Many still say God is a myth, Jesus is a myth, historical persons are a myth, and even here in these postings there are those who continue to categorize anything they cannot explain or understand as a myth. God gave us His Word, which is inundated with hidden treasures and secrets, and there is only one true interpretation but many misinterpretations. Those who have obtained knowledge and wisdom will understand the Truth, but those who have no ability to comprehend either, will continue their pursuits of the carnal, as the prophet Daniel stated in Daniel 12:10, unless of course one believes that all Scripture is merely mythical or fiction. When the "beast" or "his image", which he will create and give it the power both to speak and to kill, finally arrives as mentioned in Revelation 13:15-17 (maybe a few AI advocates will understand), most will take his "mark" in order to buy and sell and will fulfill the abomination of desolation, as recorded in Daniel 12:11, and referenced by Jesus in Matthew 24:15 & Mark 13:14. There are interesting days ahead for mankind, as we continue to turn away from the Creator and turn to the created works of our hands, which we now revere. Creation, as stated in Genesis 1, doesn't conflict with science or cosmology. It only illustrates the inability of most humans to understand it, and understanding only comes through unconditional love, which is based on the intangible of faith, both of which are foreign concepts to the minds of most.

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  7. CGriffin11:41 AM

    Cherry, your argument is saying that since some part of the Bible isn't an as-seen-by-video-camera description, then we can't trust that the whole Bible isn't just a made-up piece of imagination.

    Have you ever heard of a word called "genre"? There is also this cool thing called context. And writing-style. And communication. Literary techniques.

    We can look at Hosea 6 and see that "the third day" isn't possibly a 24-hour day. Does that mean that nowhere in the Bible does the word "day" mean 24-hours? Of course not!

    When Isaiah describes the sun being darkened and the moon turning to blood when God judges those who had taken the Israelites captive, does it mean the entire Bible is false because those things didn't happen in an as-seen-by-video-camera way? Of course not!

    There are things like metaphors, parables, hyperbole, poetry, dramatization, linguistic imagery, etc, which are obvious to anyone who studies something.

    Likewise with the beginnings of Genesis. Just because the writer used story to contrast between the gods of the surrounding peoples and God doesn't mean that the entire Bible is nothing but a story.

    There is a very distinct change in genre, tone, writing style, etc which comes with the introduction of Abraham. Before Abram, the details of specific actions are sketchy, at best, and are made in a clear story-telling method of communication. When it gets to Abraham, we start getting a lot more specific details, and the communication style shifts drastically.

    We start getting slice-of-life glimpses; we get tiny details; we get names of servants; we get very specific descriptions of the land. There are hundreds of basic indications that the type of communication has shifted from that of story-to-communicate-an-idea to that of story-of-familiar-historic-events.

    Only those mocking the Bible and those claiming the Bible is a video camera literalism refuse to accept that there is more than just a single genre to the Bible.

    Examples:
    The Internet is full of mocking about how the Bible claims the sky is supported by pillars. (super-literalistic use of the poetry of Psalms)
    The YEC camps are full of claims how "spreading the heavens like a tent" proves the universe is expanding. (super-literalistic use of the poetry of Psalms)

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  8. Charles, I do not necessarily believe that Adam and Eve were not historical people. In fact, I am still working that one through. Something can be both myth and metaphor--the book of John is filled with metaphor and symbolic language. I would encourage you to read the running set of articles on the historicity of Adam and Eve and original sin over at Steve Martin's blog. It is quite illuminating.

    It is plain that God is trying to teach us about sin and its nature through the Adam and Eve story, whether they are or are not real people. In some senses, the entire creation story is symbolic (see Conrad Hyers) on this. One gets a sense of this because of the vast differences between Genesis 1 and 2 where, in the first story, everything is created first and then humans are created to become the pinnacle while in the second story, humans are created first and then the animals are created because Adam is lonely. It is hard to work up a belief in the literalism of the account based on that.

    CGriffin, I wish I knew more about physics but don't have the time to immerse myself in that, unfortunately. You are not the first to criticize Schroeder on these grounds. My experience with stuff that goes on at the ICR is that they have little interest in actually learning the science that they villify, so it is not surprising that Humphreys got much wrong. They certainly don't know merd about evolution.

    As far as the genre argument goes, I think it has wings. But it is clear, based on the chronology of the first six days that something non-literal is afoot.

    Marie-Chantal, I like your understanding of myth. I have a tendency to think that being created imago dei means being created in the spiritual image of God. After all, as one of my friends once said "when God spreads his wings over us, do we envision Him as a chicken?"

    AMW, I think that Orr was using it, like Dawkins, as a flawed but workable example of how evolution works. I think that both of them are aware that even the fixed letters are subject to mutation. The point was to show that Dembski's and Behe's models of evolution were wrong to assume complete randomness of every locus at every generation.

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  9. Charles, I do not necessarily believe that Adam and Eve were not historical people. In fact, I am still working that one through. Something can be both myth and metaphor--the book of John is filled with metaphor and symbolic language. I would encourage you to read the running set of articles on the historicity of Adam and Eve and original sin over at Steve Martin's blog. It is quite illuminating.

    It is plain that God is trying to teach us about sin and its nature through the Adam and Eve story, whether they are or are not real people. In some senses, the entire creation story is symbolic (see Conrad Hyers) on this. One gets a sense of this because of the vast differences between Genesis 1 and 2 where, in the first story, everything is created first and then humans are created to become the pinnacle while in the second story, humans are created first and then the animals are created because Adam is lonely. It is hard to work up a belief in the literalism of the account based on that.

    CGriffin, I wish I knew more about physics but don't have the time to immerse myself in that, unfortunately. You are not the first to criticize Schroeder on these grounds. My experience with stuff that goes on at the ICR is that they have little interest in actually learning the science that they villify, so it is not surprising that Humphreys got much wrong. They certainly don't know merd about evolution.

    As far as the genre argument goes, I think it has wings. But it is clear, based on the chronology of the first six days that something non-literal is afoot.

    Marie-Chantal, I like your understanding of myth. I have a tendency to think that being created imago dei means being created in the spiritual image of God. After all, as one of my friends once said "when God spreads his wings over us, do we envision Him as a chicken?"

    AMW, I think that Orr was using it, like Dawkins, as a flawed but workable example of how evolution works. I think that both of them are aware that even the fixed letters are subject to mutation. The point was to show that Dembski's and Behe's models of evolution were wrong to assume complete randomness of every locus at every generation.

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  10. Sorry about that. For some reason, my last comment posted twice.

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  11. @CGriffin,

    I am fully aware of the various biblical genres and literary typing; your smug, patronizing comments do little to advance the conversation.

    I am by no means trying to read the bible in a woodenly literal way (or in your terms, a "video camera" way). However, appealing to genre does not answer the larger question of historicity.

    The question I posed was at what point do the "mythological" characters become historical characters?

    At some point, the biblical characters have to transition from mythological to historical. At what point in history does this happen? And what (and whose) standard of measurement shall we use to make that judgment? Yours?

    Christianity is a faith that appeals to history. If Jesus was not a historical person who lived, died, and rose again, then Christianity is a farce.

    Jesus referred to various biblical characters as historical figures, without any sense of myth or legend: Jonah, Moses, Daniel, and Adam, to name four.

    If Jesus thought that these figures were historical personages, then the burden to prove otherwise is on the skeptic (at least from the perspective of one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
    If you don't believe that, then I would not expect you to care one whit about what Jesus said or didn't say.)

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  12. Anonymous3:24 AM

    There are a few erroneous conclusions that I really feel need to be pointed out.

    First, Genesis 2 does not claim that Adam was made before the animals. It simply says that God had him name them all and in the process try to find one suitable to help him. That is in complete agreement with the Genesis 1 account.

    Also, I know this hasn't been a part of the discussion, but it needs to be pointed out. The Bible never says that Adam and Eve didn't have other children than the ones mentioned. After all, they were instructed to "be fruitful and multiply," so they likely had many other children than the ones mentioned. The Bible only mentions the ones that are essential to the story of salvation, which is the overall theme of the entire Bible. That means that Cain's wife could easily have been one of the other children, and the city being built could easily have been for the families of the many siblings.

    Second, if one is a Christian, then one must necessarily believe that Adam and Eve were literal humans because they were the ones who committed the first sin. And if there was no first sin, then there was no need for salvation, so the entire Bible (which is the story of God's plan for salvation) is pointless. And to add to the point Charles was making, if Adam and Eve and the family line were metaphorical, then Jesus didn't exist. Yet there is ample secular historical evidence that proves he did. So either Adam and Eve really existed and the Bible is true, or they are metaphors and the Bible is a lie.

    Also, I really don't appreciate the number of people who assume that intelligent design is wrong simply because the people defending it appear to be rather naive. So Schroeder completely messed up the science (both the biology and the physics), and he also used theology that is horribly flawed. That doesn't mean that intelligent design is wrong. It just means that Schroeder is wrong. So please stop downing on intelligent design because of the people who support it. The core idea can still be right even if the people who support it and their arguments are not.

    The way I see it, there is really no way to "prove" that the universe was created by intelligent design. But there is no way to disprove it either. So look at the world around you. It is a vast, beautiful, complex, intricate, and delicate place. You can either choose to believe that this world was a result of mere chance, thus all the beauty and intricacy is pointless and meaningless, or you can believe that there was (and is) a mighty, loving God behind it all, and He created this wonderful world to show us just how much He really cares for us. There's no way to prove either position (we can't actually go back in time to see what really happened), so it's up to you to choose what you believe.

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