This review was contributed by Don Waldroup, Jonathan’s father (see previous post for more info).
Of the numerous books about the origin of the universe and faith that I have read, God’s Universe is one of my favorites. It is the written version of the William Belden Noble Lecture Series that Gingerich delivered at Harvard in 2005. Professor Gingerich is a professor of astronomy and the history of science at Harvard. He is also a devout Mennonite for whom faith and science are not at odds. The Mennonites are similar to the Amish, in the Anabaptist tradition (i.e., supporting adult rather than infant baptism), pacifist, and strongly focused on the Scriptures though not rejecting all of modernity as the Amish do. The book is a relatively small volume of 121 pages, which I read comfortably during a plane ride to Wisconsin.
As you might expect from a lecture series, it has a conversational style and is addressed to a lay audience, which makes it very accessible and pleasant to read. It is also written with a friendly and warm but direct tone that is in stark contrast to some of the recent ‘militant’ atheist tomes. This book/lecture series builds upon earlier lectures he delivered at the University of Pennsylvania and which he describes as ‘pro-Christian/anti-Creationism.’ He argues that the universe was created with intention and purpose, and that believing in that does not interfere with the enterprise of science.
The first chapter examines what has been called the Copernican Principle, the idea that we are just one of many similar planets in one of many solar systems with nothing really special to distinguish this one. This implies that in such a vast universe, containing 1011 stars in the Milky Way alone, there must be other intelligent life out there, so we are nothing special, nor is the earth. This idea spawned the SETI efforts (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), created a controversy when the Smithsonian showed a movie entitled The Privileged Planet a few years ago, and helps undergird (along with evolutionary philosophy) the idea that human life is no more special than any other life form.
Steven J. Gould, Ernst Mayr, Irven DeVore and other evolutionist atheists insist that if the ‘evolutionary tape’ could be rewound and played again, the result would be entirely different as a result of randomness. However, Prof. Gingerich points out that in this way ‘science’ wants to have it both ways: on the one hand to insist that with such a vast universe there must be intelligent life out there somewhere (and go searching for it via the SETI project), while on the other hand insisting that human life is no more than a glorious accident that would not happen again even if given the chance. He then references some of the so-called anthropic coincidences (the solubilities, diffusion constant, bonding strengths, nature of carbon/oxygen/water, etc) that allow life. While he allows that contingency and natural selection do play a role in accounting for producing organisms well adapted to their surroundings, nothing in evolution can address the extraordinary array of physical and chemical conditions that allow life in the first place. Physics is a more important issue than biology in that regard. His personal conclusion is that the universe was predestined to produce both life and the mind.
The second lecture surveys the origin of the universe and some of the key anthropic coincidences he had mentioned earlier, such as how the expansion force of the Big Bang and the force of gravity must be balanced to within 1 part in 1059 or else the universe would have self-destructed without life, the remarkable properties of water and carbon, how oxygen is formed, and why oxygen and carbon require an old universe. He concludes that he believes in intelligent design (small ‘i’ and small ‘d’) but not Intelligent Design. He points out that a key issue is not whether mutations happen, but which mutations are designed versus contingent. He asks, ‘are mutations only a result of blind chance or is God’s miraculous hand continually at work, disguised in the ambiguity of the uncertainty principle?’ This is at the end a debate about the role and nature of miracles, as others have also pointed out. His position is that science cannot determine such things, nor will science collapse or be threatened if its practitioners believe that key mutations were ‘inspired.’ Science would be unable to recognize a mutation that was hand-picked by God, so to say, from any other mutation.
He correctly points out that the militant atheism of such as Dawkins ‘single-handedly makes more converts to Intelligent Design than any of the leading Intelligent Design theorists’. I think he is spot-on here: many Christians react to the arrogance, vitriol, and atheism of evolutionists much more than to the science. He goes on to point out that ‘it is just as wrong to present evolution in high school classrooms as a final cause as it is to fob off Intelligent Design as a substitute for an efficacious efficient cause.’ He accepts a God of purpose and design and a science that limits itself to understanding efficient causes, rejecting the materialist metaphysics that many evolutionists seek to sell as part-and-parcel of their science.
The final lecture deals with ‘questions without answers’, pointing out the limits of science. He notes altruism, freedom and choice must also be considered, as well as things like beauty and consistency, which also play into what is accepted in science. He concludes again that whether the mutations driving evolution are random or hopelessly improbable based on randomness alone is a question beyond the reach of science. He ends in the epilogue with his conclusion to believe in a ‘dappled world’ (quoting Gerard Manley Hopkins) in which randomness and chance join with choice and inexorable law. It is ‘both and’ not ‘either or’. This reminds me of how predestination and sovereignty co-exist with free will and choice in the Bible.
While these brief lectures do not go into scientific depth in any of these areas, the book does a good job of surveying many of the key issues, highlighting the limits of science, and pointing out where metaphysics (philosophy) gets in the way of science. Those wanting to quibble about details in a particular example will be disappointed, but those looking for an overview that is not over-heated by opinion will find it useful. It reminded me of why, in matters of origins, physics precedes and controls biology, how the debate of the content of classrooms needs to be re-framed, and how the limits of science need more emphasis among Christians seeking the truth in both science and philosophy.
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