God is on the ropes: The brilliant new science that has creationists terrified

[cbayer]

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/03/god_is_on_the_ropes_the_brilliant_new_science_that_has_creationists_and_the_christian_right_terrified/

SATURDAY, JAN 3, 2015 08:00 AM CST

God is on the ropes: The brilliant new science that has creationists and the Christian right terrified

A young MIT professor is finishing Darwin's task — and threatening to undo everything the wacky right holds dear

PAUL ROSENBERG


Charles Darwin (Credit: Wikimedia/WDG Photo via Shutterstock/Salon)

The Christian right’s obsessive hatred of Darwin is a wonder to behold, but it could someday be rivaled by the hatred of someone you’ve probably never even heard of. Darwin earned their hatred because he explained the evolution of life in a way that doesn’t require the hand of God. Darwin didn’t exclude God, of course, though many creationists seem incapable of grasping this point. But he didn’t require God, either, and that was enough to drive some people mad.

Darwin also didn’t have anything to say about how life got started in the first place — which still leaves a mighty big role for God to play, for those who are so inclined. But that could be about to change, and things could get a whole lot worse for creationists because of Jeremy England, a young MIT professor who’s proposed a theory, based in thermodynamics, showing that the emergence of life was not accidental, but necessary. “Under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life,” he was quoted as saying in an article in Quanta magazine early in 2014, that’s since been republished by Scientific American and, more recently, by Business Insider. In essence, he’s saying, life itself evolved out of simpler non-living systems.

The notion of an evolutionary process broader than life itself is not entirely new. Indeed, there’s evidence, recounted by Eric Havelock in “The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics,” that it was held by the pre-Socratic natural philosophers, who also first gave us the concept of the atom, among many other things. But unlike them or other earlier precursors, England has a specific, unifying, testable evolutionary mechanism in mind.

Quanta fleshed things out a bit more like this:

From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life.

more at link

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. I just love the smell of science in the morning!

[cbayer]

2. This one required me getting that coffee down in a hurry.

Glad you liked it!

[mindwalker_i]

12. Coffee tends to self-organize itself

in you face, in order to more efficiently dissipate its heat into your stomach.

[cbayer]

14. LOl, well played!

[valerief]

18. Great line!

[BillZBubb]

3. Interesting idea. Thanks for the post.

[niyad]

4. very interesting. I hope it makes those cretins' teeny weeny widdle heads explode.

[edhopper]

5. This seems appropriate

“God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance.”

[cbayer]

6. Clever, but when you start to define god, you are asking for trouble.

Is that what you are doing?

[edhopper]

8. I am not

I am embracing the gist of the article.

The rise of life was one of those pockets some used.

[cbayer]

9. Well, we are back where we started.

You seem to think there is finite knowledge and that every time something is discovered, the island that "god" sits on gets smaller.

This is true only if one embraces the god of the gaps theory and that knowledge is finite. Do you believe those two things?

[Roy Rolling]

7. Very detailed

This is just another theory like the theory of evolution or the theory of creation. It requires faith that eventually it will prove something that will prove its validity.

Sorry, with all due respect, I do not have that set of structured beliefs any more than I have a zealot's embrace of creationism.

And I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on kid's degrees at MIT, so I have great respect for the professor's pedigree and the poster's lengthy history of thoughtful insights.

[cbayer]

11. Hello Roy Rolling! I hope that MIT investment will pay off someday, lol.

I agree. This is just another theory that will either be strengthened or weakened by evidence. It sounds good, but it needs testing.

[AlbertCat]

19. It sounds good, but it needs testing.

If it needs testing, it's not a theory, it's a hypothesis. It becomes a theory when testing cannot disprove it.... or aspects of it.


Is this a real scientific theory or a hypothesis? Sounds more like a hypothesis to me, but then I've just read this little bit about it.


One thing is for sure however. There's no need to bring the supernatural into any of it.

[cbayer]

23. Will there be a quiz later, professor?

[exboyfil]

30. It is a hypothesis

Actually I am not entirely sure it has even reached that level since defining a test for it is going to be very difficult.

[AlbertCat]

17. It requires faith that eventually it will prove something that will prove its validity.

No it doesn't.

That's a "hypothesis".

A theory makes predictions that actually have turned out to be true through experimentation and confirmation. A theory requires confirmation, not faith.

[Heddi]

10. Oh please. NOTHING will be proof enough for Creationists or Young Earthers

the fossil record, geology, carbon dating, sound scientific theories and hard evidence aren't enough to change the mind of those who think the earth is 6000 years old, or that Eve was made from Adam's rib.

Nothing, no single piece or library full of evidence will ever change these people's mind.

These people live on the fringe of reality. You will never be able to close the gaps enough to remove God, in their mind. Okay, so you have X that proves Y. PROVE GOD DIDN'T PUT THE WHOLE THING IN MOTION. No evidence will ever be enough.

You give these wackadoodles too much credit. They're incapable of rational thought. Creationists and Young Earthers are a hair's breadth away from being Flat Earthers and moon-landing denialists.

[AlbertCat]

20. a hair's breadth away from being Flat Earthers and moon-landing denialists.

Really? They're THAT FAR away? I'd say they were in the same space at the same time!

[Warren Stupidity]

29. Or for some agnostic theists, the ones who wrap their theism

in clams of uncertainty about everything, such that no evidence is sufficient, no degree of improbability suffices, because they aren't really agnostic, they are using the argument form of agnosticism to justify their theistic beliefs.

[oldandhappy]

13. Maybe god set it up this way?

ha ha I am highly entertained by the need of many for very narrow specifics. Life is big, not narrow. I hope this theory and the people working with Jeremy England continue the expanding path to many more new chunks of learning.

[immoderate]

15. I posed this theory to Richard Dawkins a month ago.

My atheists group hosted a luncheon for him. And I asked him if he would consider: that life is an emergent behavior of matter that facilitates it's tendency toward entropy.

He thought for a moment and responded, "I wouldn't go that far."

I wonder if this will shine some new light on his opinion. I didn't have the math to back it up.

--imm

[Stonepounder]

16. Fascinating idea. Will be interested to see where it goes.

However, y'all seem to think that Science and God are somehow opposite ends of a continuum. Science does not disprove God any more than God disproves science. That's not to say that the Creationists and the Young Earthers aren't wackos, any more than Westboro Baptist Church is Christian.

[AlbertCat]

21. Science does not disprove God any more than God disproves science.

I don't know what you even mean here.

But Science does make god superfluous.... and NOT vice versa.

[cbayer]

24. Science makes god superfluous? No it doesn't.

And god doesn't make science superfluous.

If god is superfluous in your life, that's cool, but where did you get the idea that you could extrapolate your experience and make it universal?

[Buzz Clik]

26. Odd.

A few observations:

1) Science is not capitalized. Why did you do that?
2) God is superfluous to a lot of people who know nothing of science.
3) Faith does not require science, and, despite extraordinary efforts to the contrary, strong scientific arguments don't dissuade faith or the faithful.

A lot of scientists are strong believers. I simply don't see the role of science in discussions about God.

[pinto]

27. Maybe accept that neither are superfluous?

More or less so for some. I don't think we are solely binary thinking beings. How could we be? Either / or doesn't apply, imo.

[AlbertCat]

35. Which god were you thinking was not superfluous?

Baal?
Acan?
Baldr?
Hephaestus?
Hnoss?
Phanes?
Ixchel
Ullr?
Nyx?
Yum Kax?
Kuhimama?

[cbayer]

36. You find them all superfluous.

Some find individual or multiple gods important and necessary.

I would bet there are some things you find important and necessary that I would find superfluous. Does that mean they are generally gratuitous or just to me?

[Stonepounder]

32. Obviously I wasn't clear. Sorry about that.

What I was trying to say was that a belief in God does not mean that you can't believe in science, any more than accepting scientific theories (i.e., theory of gravity, string theory, theory of evolution, theory of relativity, etc) does not mean you can't believe in God.
Hence 'a belief in God does not disprove science' any more than accepting science forces us to reject the concept of God i.e. '[a belief in' God does not disprove science' as Creationists and Young Earthers would have you believe. Indeed, there is a reasonable argument to be made that the anthropic cosmological principle is a strong argument for the existence of God, but that is a whole other discussion.

[Buzz Clik]

22. Why the obsession with creationists in this context?

This is fascinating science. The need to bring religion and God into the discussion is lost on me.

And, no, this will not terrify creationists. They have the remarkable ability of ignoring science or explaining science in terms of God's guiding hand.

[cbayer]

25. I wish you were not, but I fear you are correct.

While I understand how this puts another nail in the creationism coffin, I agree that the true creationists will likely just cling more tightly to their beliefs.

[pinto]

28. They will. Doubt seems to be anathema in that setting.

Or something similar to doubt. I've little contact with anyone who holds that point of view, but from what I hear I feel it is as much fear based as faith based.

[cbayer]

31. Fear. I think that plays a big part.

Fear that they might be wrong, and if they are wrong about this, what else might they be wrong about.

I believe that there are ways to teach science, including evolution, that will not be threatening. I'm not sure what that is, but I think it's worth looking for.

[pinto]

33. I'd go with a return to the joy and awe in the sciences. It's not all cut 'n dried.

It's not all about a career track, per se.

I loved my science courses. Was fortunate to have inspiring instructors who clearly loved it all and passed that on day-to-day.

[cbayer]

34. I'm with you regarding the awe and joy in discovering science.

Some of my earliest and most loved toys were science kits.

And DH calls my kitchen my laboratory, because my approach to cooking is quite scientific.

[The Blue Flower]

37. They'd have to be intelligent enough to understand to be terrified

I'm sure they couldn't care less.

[cbayer]

38. Sadly I think you are right they they could not care less,

though I'm not sure I would make a correlation with intelligence.

My hope would be that it will be harder to hang on to beliefs that fly in the face of scientific evidence as that evidence builds.

Creationism is something that the fundamentalists do seem terrified to let go of.