Category: Professional issues

Can Science Make a Fine-Tuned Case for God? – A Response to Eric Metaxas

In his Christmas Day Wall Street Journal article, author Eric Metaxas promises that he will explain how science makes a “relatively recent case for God’s existence.”  He then spends a significant part of the op-ed telling us that scientists have been looking for life sustaining planets since the 1960s but have yet to find any. Metaxas reminds readers that Congress defunded the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in 1993. He then tells us that researchers continue to look but that “As of 2014, researchers have discovered precisely bubkis—0 followed by nothing.”
In addition to the absence of habitable planets, Metaxas says humans shouldn’t be here.

As factors continued to be discovered, the number of possible planets hit zero, and kept going. In other words, the odds turned against any planet in the universe supporting life, including this one. Probability said that even we shouldn’t be here.

As I read the article, I had the nagging feeling that something wasn’t right.
On examination of NASA’s program to discover habitable planets, I found information which tells a very different story than told by Metaxas in the WSJ. For instance, in February 2014, NASA announced discovery of a “motherlode” of exoplanets, four of which orbited their stars in a habitable zone.  Then in April, NASA announced the discovery of a potentially habitable planet about the size of Earth. Watch:

And then just a week ago, NASA announced that the Kepler mission has discovered 1,000 planets with a total of eight being in the habitable zone.  In contrast to the pessimism implied by Metaxas, planet hunters seemed pleased with the results of their work:

“With each new discovery of these small, possibly rocky worlds, our confidence strengthens in the determination of the true frequency of planets like Earth,” said co-author Doug Caldwell, SETI Institute Kepler scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California. “The day is on the horizon when we’ll know how common temperate, rocky planets like Earth are.”

While eight is not a gazillion; as of now, it isn’t bubkis either.

However, it is not particularly scientific or helpful in any sense to pick a side and declare the debate over. While NASA’s planet hunters are optimistic, some experts are skeptical about life on other planets. Furthermore, the newly discovered planets might not be habitable, or they might not even exist. Recently, a team from University of Texas in Austin provided data which cast doubt on the existence of planets orbiting in the habitable zone of dwarf star Gliese 581. However, the scientific attitude is to pursue the evidence wherever it leads. The technology to find evidence of such planets is in very early stages and with advancements may lead to better understanding.

Lead researcher Paul Robertson in the Gliese study takes the position that the techniques which allowed his team to rule out a planet orbiting Gliese will allow them to find other real planets in the future. In the McDonald Observatory press release on the study, Robertson said:

While it is unfortunate to find that two such promising planets do not exist, we feel that the results of this study will ultimately lead to more Earth-like planets.

In light of their findings, I asked another member of the UT-Austin team, Michael Endl research scientist at the McDonald Observatory at UT-Austin, his view of Metaxas’ article. I wondered if he was pessimistic about finding habitable planets since he had helped disprove one such planet existed. In reply, Endl said:

One common mistake that Metaxas does is to take the null result from SETI and draw the incorrect conclusion that this means life is rare. Complex, intelligent, technological life might be sparse but simple life might be quite common. For most of its time, Earth was a planet inhabited by microbes. There could be less complex life on habitable planets around every single star in the night sky and we wouldn’t know it.

Regarding the future of planet hunting, Endl is ebullient:

NASA’s Kepler mission has already shown that small planets are common around other stars, and soon we will know how common Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars in the Kepler field are. New missions like TESS, K2 and PLATO will find more of these planets closer to us, around nearby stars. And with the next generation of large aperture ground-based telescopes, as well as new space telescopes, like the James-Webb Space Telescope, we might be able to probe some of them for bio-signatures in their atmospheres.

I also asked Endl for a list of the 200 criteria for planetary life mentioned by Metaxas. Endl replied:

This is also bogus. There is no list of criteria that scientists use. You can make this list arbitrarily long or short, depending on your viewpoint. Sagan was talking in the broadest terms, distance to star and mass/radius of the planet. Since we do not know what criteria are really needed for life to form, such a list is very artificial.

The more I gather evidence, the more I am feeling like the WSJ op-ed is both outdated and premature. It is outdated because Metaxas primarily relied on a 2006 statement from a retired political scientist (Peter Schenkel) as an authority to discredit the search for habitable planets when, in fact, there is currently great optimism about the Kepler research program and technological advances among scientists. However, the article is premature in that the search for habitable planets has a long way to go with numerous advances in technology to come. We know more than Metaxas told us, but we don’t know enough to say much for certain. Thus, it is hard to sustain confidence about the article’s premise.

It is tempting to scold Metaxas for taking us all on a ride by failing to incorporate a more complete and accurate picture of his topic. However, I want to conclude more positively.

I don’t take strong issue with one of the points Metaxas brings us. There are times when scientific research work dovetails nicely with what we believe about God. I point out this common ground frequently in my classes. For instance, I think the social psychological study of self-serving bias provides a nice point of contact with my theological views of human depravity.  Likewise, I think the work on ostracism and attachment match up nicely with theological conceptions of humans existing in the image of God. However, I don’t think we can push this too hard in areas where our knowledge is tentative.  As Kurtis McCathern pointed out yesterday, looking for God by studying the Cosmos could lead us to several different images, some of which might be hazardous to evangelical preconceptions.

In another context, I summarized my approach to faith and science:

I start with the premise that science is no threat to faith. If scientific work seems to conflict with tenets of my religion, I accept the tension until I understand things better. Extending that belief to history, I do not need the founders to be evangelicals in order to enjoy and defend American freedom for people of my faith, another faith, and no faith.

Loving God with all my mind doesn’t mean splitting it in two. If a study of science or history tells me something uncomfortable, I do not retool the science or history to make me comfortable. I walk by faith, live with the tension, and accept what is in front of my face.

Finally, I actually agree with one of Metaxas’ WSJ points: this universe and our place in it is a miracle. My personal belief is that it is a miracle brought about somehow by God. However, I don’t need science to tell me that. I know it when I listen to Led Zeppelin with a friend over tacos, hear my granddaughter say Papa, hold my grandson, watch my children grow and change, and experience the love and kindness of my wife. And after surviving open heart surgery a little over two years ago, I am more convinced than ever that every minute of life is a miracle.

Kurtis McCathern on Virtual Worlds, Watchmakers, and Other Speculations: Reactions to Eric Metaxas

One thing is sure, Eric Metaxas has people talking. His Christmas Day Wall Street Journal article titled “Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God” has been liked over 370,000 times on Facebook  and has been retweeted over 5700 times. Obviously, the topic is of great interest to many people. 
After I read the WSJ article, I reached out to a few people with questions about some of the claims. I will report on most of the answers tomorrow. However, today I want to post a reaction to Metaxas’ article from good friend and computer engineer Kurtis McCathern. Kurtis has a BA from Rice University in computer science and math and works at Blizzard Entertainment on the World of Warcraft franchise. This piece is not exactly a rebuttal but he jumps off of the WSJ article with reflections on our assumptions about God’s creativity. Yesterday, I linked to an article by Peter Enns which ended with the following observation:

Bottom line, as I see it: God’s “existence” (pardon the metaphorical language) and consequently knowing this God are not proven or disproven by the amazing advances in recent generations concerning our knowledge of the physical universe–even if those advances challenge how we think of God and speak of God.

God is not at stake. Our metaphors are.

Metaxas selectively addressed what science has to say about the origins of the universe, failing to address opposing arguments and data. Along with Enns and McCathern, I think it is too soon to know what science makes the case for.
……………………………
Virtual Worlds, Watchmakers, and Other Speculations
by Kurtis McCathern
I literally create worlds for a living. Not by myself, of course: a large team of designers, artists, and programmers work together to create the lands, flora, fauna, and characters that make up World of Warcraft. In fact, my part as a programmer is barely recognizable as creation as all. My code runs below the trees and rocks a player would see in the world, as dozens of computers fly messages back and forth to simulate the world of Azeroth. In ancient Greece, my fellow programmers and I would play the roles of Erebus and Nyx, bringing forth the Aether which would bind creation together.
It is from this perspective that I wonder why we as Christians are so fascinated with watchmaker arguments.
The canonical watchmaker analogy was made by William Paley in “Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity”, and goes more or less like this: you are walking along, you come across a watch. A watch is intricate in design, with several tiny pieces that must be made with exacting tolerances all to work together. When you come across this watch, you don’t think the watch has been there forever, or that it just spontaneously occurred. You assume the origin of the watch is a watchmaker.
Other teleological arguments predate this by thousands of years, and are not unique to Christianity, but they do seem to come up a lot in evolution vs. creation debates. They are popular because they are easy to understand and engage that most dangerous of human skills: intuition. Every time another complex, interrelated, seemingly irreducible system is described by science, the bookies of the debate stand ready to argue that the odds are irresistible. Science, do you really want to believe that you are here by a chance of one in a billion billion billons (or worse)? How big a gambler are you?
Pieces like Eric Metaxas’s recent effort in the Wall Street Journal seem to crop up whenever there’s a shiny new hard-to-explain-the-odds bit of science. They claim: science has now discovered the universe is not like a watch, it’s more complex, like a race car engine. Or a rocketship! Or the entire internet! If you came across the entire internet by chance you would assume an intelligent designer, right? (Don’t answer that.)
The odds are certainly very long, but on closer inspection you see the argument isn’t really about odds at all.
A strong argument against the watchmaker analogy already exists: it’s called the anthropic principle. It states that you can’t really worry about the odds that led to you existing, because you already do exist. You can only observe the outcome that led to you. Put it this way: if you are walking along a garden path, and you come across five dice with the number 4 facing up, you might assume that somebody set the dice like that, because it’s an extremely unlikely result. But another possibility is that the person who owns the path rolls those dice every day, and only opens it up for people to come in if all the dice come up 4’s. Thus every one who has ever seen the dice has seen them as 4’s. No other observation exists because no one was there to observe.
In other words, we as intelligent creatures can speculate on our origins only because we happen to be here. In other universes, there’s no “us” to do the speculating, or even to have the origins about which to speculate. But that doesn’t mean the universe was carefully scripted for us to arrive on stage.
The watchmaker argument hasn’t really changed; it’s just a matter of scale. Unfortunately, greater odds don’t necessarily mean there was a designer anymore than smaller odds would mean there couldn’t be.
But there’s a greater problem with watchmaker analogies for Christians: we know how to build watches, but we don’t know how to build worlds. In Greek antiquity, a speculation on origins only had to explain the ground, the air, the water, and the stars you could see. Aether seems pretty good in that light. Now we know more about experiential reality, so we have to add black holes and dark matter and Einstein’s favorite fudge factor: the cosmological constant. As a result, popular scientific opinion currently seems centered around string theory and the bubbly multiverse.
To clarify, look at another popular video game: Minecraft. Unlike World of Warcraft, where every rock or tree is placed carefully by a designer or artist, in Minecraft the entire world you inhabit is generated randomly from a single number, and millions or more unique possible worlds can result. Just constrain your equation a bit here and a bit there and suddenly you’re chopping wood in a blocky forest.
It’s a strange idea, even to science. In fact, scientists are arguing now if it’s even possible to determine the validity of string theory experimentally, since the multiverse idea means anything you don’t understand or doesn’t fit can pushed out into places you can never observe. Some, like Paul Steinhardt, are worried about losing the integrity of science as a result of trying. Given the discussion within the scientific community, it’s understandable that a non-scientist could be overwhelmed.
Yet I fear the watchmaker analogy feels compelling exactly because this strange random new world feels foreign. We know how to build watches, and we’re comfortable culturally with God the careful craftsman. Like those theologians of Galileo’s day who were unwilling to believe they weren’t the center of the universe, we don’t like the idea that God’s creative process might be less Da Vinci and more Jackson Pollock — messier and harder to understand than the knitting described in Psalm 139. Augustine reminded us that turning water into wine instantaneously at a wedding is really no more miraculous than doing it in barrels and casks over years, and likewise creation is no less miraculous if it requires a bubbly multiverse instead of scripted design. A bubbly multiverse would mean less focus on our individuality and more on God’s overall design: God as curator of creation, instead of craftsman.
Remember: a God who can create the universe by placing every tree and rock World of Warcraft style could also have written the code for the universe Minecraft style and created a billion billion billion other ones at the same time.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” Isaiah 55:8

Eric Metaxas Advances Argument that Science Provides Evidence for God on Fox and Friends Weekend

Eric Metaxas’ is getting lots of exposure as the result of his Christmas Day Wall Street Journal article on the existence of God and new book about miracles. Over the weekend, he appeared on Fox News to argue that science gives evidence for God’s existence. Watch:

Metaxas’ WSJ article has become quite popular with evangelicals. However, critical reactions have emerged including this enlightening piece from Tobin Grant. See also this response from theologian and fellow Patheos blogger Peter Enns. I plan to post at least two articles in reaction to the piece and the video above over the next couple of days. Watch for the first one this afternoon.

The Atlantic on the Art of Whistle-blowing

whistleWriting on a topic of interest to my readers these days, Kate Kenny says whistle-blowing depends more on public interest than the importance of the content.
From my experience over the years, I lean toward agreement.
Over and above Seattle and other Mars Hill cities, many people are obviously interested in what happens with the church and Mark Driscoll. The interest has been strong and consistent. However, when I posted evidence that David Jeremiah and Les and Leslie Parrott used the same book list scamming approach (Kevin Small’s company ResultSource) as Mark Driscoll, the response was tepid. In fact, Jeremiah and the Parrotts make Driscoll look like an amateur. Those authors have used Kevin Small’s genius for multiple trips up the NYT ladder. However, that news has been a snooze compared to the latest dispatch from Mars.
In any case, this article helpfully reviews some factors that whistle-blowers consider when deciding whether to step forward or not.
 

Institute on the Constitution Rep Argues Against the Constitution on Religious Test Clause

Institute on the Constitution Director of Operations Jake MacAulay today argued against the Constitution on Matt Barber’s Barbwire website.
MacAulay noted that seven states still have requirements that office holders in those states believe in a god.

There are seven states including Maryland with language in their constitutions that prohibits people who do not believe in God from holding public office.

Besides Maryland, the other six states with language in their constitutions that prohibit people who do not believe in God from holding public office are Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

Such bans were declared unconstitutional by Torcaso v. Watkins in 1961.

Torcaso v. Watkins
No. 373
Argued April 24, 1961
Decided June 19, 1961
367 U.S. 488
APPEAL FOM THE COURT OF APPEALS OF MARYLAND
Syllabus
Appellant was appointed by the Governor of Maryland to the office of Notary Public, but he was denied a commission because he would not declare his belief in God, as required by the Maryland Constitution. Claiming that this requirement violated his rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, he sued in a state court to compel issuance of his commission, but relief was denied. The State Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the state constitutional provision is self-executing, without need for implementing legislation, and requires declaration of a belief in God as a qualification for office. Held: This Maryland test for public office cannot be enforced against appellant, because it unconstitutionally invades his freedom of belief and religion guaranteed by the First Amendment and protected by the Fourteenth Amendment from infringement by the States. Pp. 367 U. S. 489-496.

A South Carolina case addressed that state’s religious test by specifically referring to Article VI of the Constitution:

Silverman v. Campbell, 326 S.C. 208, 486 S.E.2d 1 (1997):  In this case, the South Carolina Supreme Court held Article VI, section 2 (“No person who denies the existence of the Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution) and Article XVII, section 4 (“No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution) of the South Carolina Constitution violated the First Amendment and the Religious Test of the United States Constitution by barring persons who denied the existence of a “Supreme Being” from holding office.  At that time, only two states, North Carolina and South Carolina, required a religious test for public office. Full Case Materials

It is clear the framers did not intend for religion to be a test because the Constitution forbids such tests. From Article VI, paragraph three of the Constitution:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

In light of the Constitution’s clear statement here, consider this absurd statement from MacAulay:

So this constitutional requirement that an office holder must believe in God is a logical and consistent protection against those who might drive our constitutional republic in a bad direction.

This isn’t about discrimination or bigotry.  It’s about ensuring that those holding office in America are committed to the true, lawful, American philosophy of government.

Apparently, the Constitution got it wrong, according to the Institute on the Constitution’s Director of Operations. In his argument in favor of a religious test, he seems oblivious to the fact that the Constitution forbids such a test. In essence, MacAulay argues that the federal Constitution is wrong and does not represent the “true, lawful, American philosophy of government.”

This and other clear problems are why no school child should be confused and misled by the IOTC’s teaching on the Constitution via their inaccurately named American Clubs. That Matt Barber, who works at the Liberty University law school, posted this mess is another reason why no student should attend Liberty University’s School of Law.