Category: Science

The fine-tuning just got finer

Here is a link to the latest from Reasons to Believe (reasons.org).

Some scientists have maintained that the water habitable zone[1] is wide because even if a planet is farther from its star, more carbon dioxide can keep the planet warm enough for ice to melt.  This new study shows that above very strict limits, CO2 becomes toxic to oxygen-breathing animals.  The water habitable zone just got much, much, smaller.  There is much more.  Treat yourself.  Here it is:

https://www.reasons.org/explore/blogs/todays-new-reason-to-believe/read/todays-new-reason-to-believe/2019/07/01/complex-life-s-narrow-requirements-for-atmospheric-gases

The “fine-tuning of the universe” for complex life gets finer and finer the more we learn about nature.  The bottom line: it was very, very hard to create a universe in which even one earthlike planet could exist.  It would not happen by accident in a trillion, trillion, trillion years.

[1] Water habitable zone: The range of distances from its star within which a planet must be located in order for the temperature to be mild enough for liquid water to exist on the surface of the planet.

The Shrinking Habitable Zone

Otis Graf is a member of Reasons to Believe’s Apologetics Community.  He recently posted a message which deserves to be known to everyone.

I have written often about “the fine-tuning of the universe” (see joshualetter/blog, “The Existence of God – Four Philosophical Arguments,” June 28, 2018 post, chapter II).  Otis presents yet more evidence that our hospitable planet could not have occurred anywhere in the universe by chance, not even once.  Here is Otis’ message, with almost no editing.

A team of five scientists from NASA and several universities has, for the first time, shown that most exoplanets that were thought to be potentially habitable are, in fact, toxic to complex life.  Here, “complex” means oxygen-dependent multicellular life.

Here is the popular article which is a news release from Univ. California Riverside: “New study dramatically narrows the search for advanced life in the universe.  Toxic gases limit the types of life we could find on habitable worlds.”  Here is the paper that was published in the Astrophysical Journal.  “A Limited Habitable Zone for Complex Life”

It turns out that for Sun-like stars, most of the “traditional habitable zone” [where water can exist in liquid form] is ruled out because those regions require poisonous concentrations of CO2 in order to remain warm enough to host liquid surface water.  The smaller M dwarf stars will produce atmospheres of toxic carbon monoxide.

The search for intelligent life (SETI) takes a particularly hard hit from this research.  This is a conclusion from the published paper:

One implication is that we may not expect to find remotely detectable signs of intelligent life (“technosignatures”) on planets orbiting late M dwarfs or on potentially habitable planets near the outer edge of their HZs. These CO2 and CO limits should be considered in future targeted SETI searches.

The paper’s authors even invoke anthropic reasoning: “More broadly, limitations on complex life by CO2 and CO may partially address why we find ourselves near the inner edge of the HZ of a G-dwarf star rather than near the center or toward the outer edge of the HZ around one of the much more numerous M-dwarf stars.”

In the UC news release, the lead author of the paper is quoted as saying this:

I think showing how rare and special our planet is only enhances the case for protecting it.  As far as we know, Earth is the only planet in the universe that can sustain human life.

That sums it up.  Earth really is an Improbable Planet.

Otis Graf

Houston, TX

And remember: there are not one but eleven known habitable zones.  For advanced life to be possible, its planet must be in all eleven HZ’s at the same time and must remain there for a long, long time. See https://www.reasons.org/explore/blogs/todays-new-reason-to-believe/read/todays-new-reason-to-believe/2019/03/04/tiny-habitable-zones-for-complex-life.

 

 

Fuzale Rana of Reasons to Believe offers A Response to the Most Compelling Evidence for Biological Evolution

 

Fuzale Rana is a biochemist with Reasons to Believe.  This video is an excellent example of the outstanding work which this organization has been doing for over 30 years now.

Dr. Rana opens by describing the recent discovery that the duckbill platypus may hold the key to the treatment of type-2 diabetes in humans.  The male platypus has a venom in its hind feet which contains a hormone that causes its attackers’ blood sugar to crash, causing the attacker to become lethargic.  The hormone is similar to one in humans which also regulates blood sugar, but which is not as long-lasting.  By studying the hormone, scientists may be able to devise a treatment for type-2 diabetes, which is characterized by dangerously high levels of blood sugar.

Evolutionists insist that similar structures in various species must be interpreted within an evolutionary framework as evidence of common ancestry.  Indeed, they cite such similarities (which they call “homologies”) as the most compelling evidence for evolution.  Rana explains how such similarities make more sense within a design framework.

Why would a creator employ common designs?

Homologies make the biological realm intelligible.  If the body structure of every species were fundamentally different, studying one species would offer us no insight as to the functioning of any other species.  Biology as a discipline would be nearly impossible.  The similarity of life-forms enables us to comprehend life generally.  This, in turn, enables us not only to devise treatments for human illness by studying other species, but also to fulfill the divine command to be stewards and caretakers of the planet.

There is more!  Budget 40 minutes for Dr. Rana’s remarks, but don’t miss the Q and A.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

The Existence of God: A Concise Summary

Since publishing my essay on the existence of God, I have wanted to provide a concise summary of the argument.

Why do I do this?  It is because when I see the trees and the stars, realizing the transcendent genius which was required in order to create them, I hear a voice saying to me, “I love you.”

The classic cosmological argument for the existence of God rests on the premise that whatever begins to exist – that is to say, anything which is not past-infinite, anything which is not eternal – must have a cause for its existence.  But even before one considers whether or not to accept that premise, it is useful to observe that there are really only four possible scenarios for the origin of the universe.  This can be clearly seen from the following set of necessary propositions.

Either the universe had a beginning, or it didn’t.

If the universe had a beginning, then either it had a cause or it did not have a cause.

If the universe did have a cause, its cause likewise either had a beginning, or it didn’t.

Those three binary possibilities are exhaustive; that is, there are no other possibilities.  This leads to four possible origin scenarios.

  1. Possible scenario #1.: The universe did not have a beginning; that is, it has always existed.

Modern science has shown this simply not to be the case.  There is a scientific consensus, based on extensive observation, that the universe had a beginning approximately 13.8 billion years ago.

  1. Possible scenario #2.: The universe had a beginning, and it popped into existence out of nothing, uncaused.

This is not logically impossible, but it is implausible because it violates the principles of causation, which affirm that nothing happens without a cause.[1]

  1. Possible scenario #3.: The universe had a beginning, and it was caused by some separate entity which itself also had a beginning.

This too is logically possible, but it entails an infinite regress of non-eternal causes, since one must then ask, what caused the cause, and then, what caused that cause, etc., etc.  If the regression is infinite then it begs the question: how did the regression begin if it did not begin with an eternal cause?  The only way for the regression not to be infinite is for it to come sooner or later to a cause which had no beginning, which is equivalent to the fourth scenario.

  1. Possible scenario #4.: The universe had a beginning, and it was caused by some separate entity which did not itself have a beginning – that is, the cause of the universe was some eternal entity. This is one step from theism. Theism does not entail any of the difficulties inherent in the other possibilities: it has not been falsified empirically, it does not violate the principles of causation, and it does not beg the question.  Thus, theism is truly the only plausible explanation for the existence of the universe.

Scientists believe that all matter and energy, along with space and time themselves, came into existence about 13.8 billion years ago.  If so, and if the universe had a cause, then the cause must have been immaterial, timeless, and immensely powerful.  The Fine-Tuning of the universe shows that the cause was a conscious, purposive Agent of incomprehensible intelligence.  These are some of the attributes which science shows the Creator possesses, to a virtual certainty, and now we have come all the way to theism.  God exists.

There is another basis for concluding that the Creator is a personal entity.  If that were not the case – if the cause of the universe were some physical state of affairs existing from eternity past, then all of the conditions needed for the universe to come into existence would themselves have existed from eternity past; and if so, then there would have been nothing to prevent those conditions from producing the universe at some time in the infinite past.  And if that had occurred, then because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that in a closed system entropy (disorganization) always increases with time, the universe would already have reached heat death.  It has not done so; therefore, the cause of the universe could not have been a purely physical state of affairs existing from eternity past.

[1] This is the first premise of the cosmological argument.  For a more complete analysis of this premise, see joshualetter.com/blog, June 28, 2018, page 11.

Here is the Latest on the Science of Same-Sex Attraction

Jesus loves LGBT!

“. . . [T]here is a great chasm between much of the public discourse and what science has shown.”

             – Lawrence S. Mayer, Paul R. McHugh, Special Report: Sexuality and Gender – Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences.  The New Atlantis, Number 50, Fall 2016.

In the first six months of 2015, I researched and wrote my Survey of the scholarly literature concerning the nature of same-sex attraction (SSA) and its causes, and published it on this blog under the title, What is Homosexuality – A Survey of the Scholarly Literature.  (Originally posted June 26, 2015; reposted July 4, 2015, see below.)  My primary motive for diving into the literature was to inform myself in order to be able to help my sons in their thinking about the topic.  Chiefly I wanted to know: is there anything to the claim that SSA is inborn and immutable?

Not much, I learned.  The most concise and fair way to summarize my findings would be to say that while there do appear to be one or more unidentified biological factors – perhaps genetic and/or epigenetic – which contribute causally to the incidence of homosexuality, other causes are much more significant, including adverse childhood experience, parental role modeling, and individual free choice; and large numbers of LGBT do change their choices of partners and even their SSA, some once, and some many times over the course of a lifetime.  In short, the weight of the evidence, far from justifying the supplanting of traditional sexual morality, instead provides substantial reason for its reaffirmation.

By pure coincidence, I finished my Survey and posted it on the very day of the decision of the US Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, the gay marriage case.  By that time I had become conscious of the utter lack of discussion about the science of SSA in the policy debates, from gay marriage to transgenderism; but I was still amazed that the science was given virtually no place at all in the Court’s decision.  In the opinion of the Court there was only one mention of any scientific authority, which was a reference to the claim in the brief filed by the American Psychological Association that “sexual orientation is both a normal expression of human sexuality and immutable” – but the APA brief contains no reference to any scientific evidence.  Yet none of the four dissenting Justices even mentioned the APA’s claim, much less challenged it.  Could it be that 100 “friend of the court” briefs ignored the science completely?

I began looking for someone, anyone, engaged in bringing the science into the policy discussion.  It took over a year, but I have found two pairs of scholars who have published their own surveys of the scientific findings about SSA.  It is very gratifying to be able to say that my own findings are almost entirely consistent with theirs.

One pair published their findings way back in 2000 – unfortunately, I did not become aware of it until August 2016.  Stanton Jones is Professor of Psychology at Wheaton College, and Mark A. Yarhouse is Professor of Psychology at Regent University.  Their book, Homosexuality: The Use of Scientific Research in the Church’s Moral Debate, published by InterVarsity Press, is outstanding.  The other pair of scholars published their review of the literature in a lengthy article in the Fall 2016 issue of The New Atlantis.  Lawrence S. Mayer is a scholar at the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a professor of statistics and biostatistics at Arizona State University.  Paul R. McHugh is University Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.  Their conclusions track very closely with Jones’ and Yarhouse’s (and with mine), namely: there does appear to be a weak biological factor in SSA, but “scientific research does not give much support to the hypothesis that sexual orientation is innate and fixed. . . .  Some of the most widely held views about sexual orientation, such as the ‘born that way’ hypothesis, simply are not supported by science.”

Let me emphasize again, LGBT individuals bear the image of God as much as anyone.  They are citizens and entitled to be treated with dignity and respect.  However, the reckless departure on which our society has embarked is very dangerous.  May it be that our courts and legislatures will soon become acquainted with what science has to say about SSA.  Spread the word.

More Exciting Findings Show Earth’s Uniqueness

The Search for Extraterrestrial Life continues.  You’ve all heard of the “habitable zone”  – the narrow range of distances from the host star at which a planet will have liquid water, an essential condition for life?  Well actually it would seem scientists have identified at least eight habitable zones in which a planet must reside in order to harbor advanced life.  Treat yourself to this.