Earth Left “A Path of Tools” to Scientific Discovery
Earth Left “A Path of Tools” to Scientific Discovery
The first few chapters of the wonderful new Discovery Institute Press book, The Farm at the Center of the Universe, by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jonathan Witt, present evidence for intelligent design in biology in the form of a novel, accessible to teens and young adults. Young Isaac, his older cousin Charlie, and their Grandpa discuss molecular machines, irreducible complexity, the fossil record, devolution vs. evolution, cells as remarkable factories that build factories (that build factories …), and the claim that intelligent design is not science. The authors manage to introduce these and other topics into the conversations in a surprisingly natural and accessible way, without sacrificing scientific accuracy, as I noted in my earlier review.
But Gonzalez is an astronomer and perhaps best known for the book The Privileged Planet, written with Jay Richards, and a video by the same name, so the last few chapters find Grandpa and Isaac looking though a telescope more often than a microscope.
We viewed several segments from the Privileged Planet video during my five-week class on intelligent design last summer. This ten-minute clip was shown to document some of the evidence for the local fine-tuning of conditions on Earth, and this short segment was used to help document evidence for the global fine-tuning of the laws and constants of physics and of the initial conditions of our
The Anthropic Principle
As discussed in this class, the standard “anthropic principle” objection to the use of these fine-tunings as evidence for design is to assert that there are many planets and many universes with different conditions, and naturally we would inhabit one of the few lucky planets and one of the few lucky universes which are life-permitting, because otherwise we wouldn’t be here to wonder why we are here. This objection is of course more reasonable when applied to the local fine-tuning, not only because there really are many other planets, and no evidence that there are other universes, but also because the range of parameters which could support any conceivable form of life is much narrower in the global case.
Designed for Scientific Discovery
But The Privileged Planet is best known for presenting evidence that not only are the conditions on our planet, and its location, ideal for survival but also for scientific discovery, as discussed in this 15-minute segment. So, I was delighted to see this topic discussed at length in the new book. Grandpa summarizes:
What amazes me is that we can see so much of our universe from right here on Earth. Our planet is astonishing. It is incredibly well set up to allow us to live here. And it is incredibly well set up to allow us to discover all manner of things, from tiny cells to the enormous universe.
In our summer 2023 class we also viewed these clips from Michael Denton’s video Fire Maker which present further evidence that the conditions on Earth are finely tuned for scientific discovery and technological progress, and so are the laws of physics of our universe
Set Up for Science
The fine-tunings for scientific discovery and technological progress are very interesting to me and not just because they defeat the anthropic principle, which only attempts to explain fine-tunings for survival. (We would still be here to wonder without these fine-tunings.) They are so satisfying to me because they show those scientists who insist that nothing could possibly be beyond the reach of their science that they have been able to reach so far with that science in the first place because they have been set up to do so!
At the end of Chapter 8 Isaac concludes “It’s almost like Earth wanted us to do science and invent things. Like someone left a path of tools for us to discover and use.” Gonzalez and Denton have provided us with evidence that supports this remarkable conclusion. One hopes future research will provide even more evidence.
Many thanks to Gonzalez and Witt for the new book, which is thought-provoking not only for its young target audience, but for all of us.
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