Sunday, October 3, 2010

A New “Earth” Found?, and other topics

Good morning. I wanted to address last week's news story about a "new" Earth, as well as another topic. First, the New Earth – this is a planet scientists discovered that has similar conditions to that of Earth, and may be able to support life. Here's the story from Sept. 30 CNN:

  1. A New Earth Found?    Gliese 581g may be the new Earth. A team of astronomers from the University of California and the Carnegie Institute of Washington say they've found a planet like ours, 20 light years (120 trillion miles) from Earth, where the basic conditions for life are good. "The chances for life on this planet are 100 percent," Steven Vogt, a UC professor of astronomy and astrophysics says. "I have almost no doubt about it." The planet is three times the size of Earth, but the gravity is similar. Dr. Elizabeth Cunningham, planetarium astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, says the discovery is a huge deal. "It could have liquid water on the surface," she said. "That's the first step to find life." …

    But if we did - we'd find some other things familiar. The atmosphere and gravity are similar to Earth, and if you're from the polar regions, you'd definitely feel right at home. Scientists say the highest average temperature is about -12 degrees Celcius (10 Fahrenheit), but they point out that the planet doesn't have a night and day - one side continually faces the star and the other side faces the darkness of space. This means one side is blazing hot and the other freezing cold. But Cunningham also called it a Goldilocks planet – it's not too cold, and it's not too hot, it's just right for water to form.

    Tom's view – in the past I have shown skepticism on the chance of life being found on another planet. I based this on the exceptional number of unique characteristics that Earth has in which to support life. Not just water, but other things like the right force of gravity, a right sized moon, the right speed of rotation, the right atmosphere, etc. But now that this other planet was found, with a temperature of 10 degrees, that does not rotate, and because Gliese 581g has two of these conditions: the possibility of water on the planet along with a similar gravity, Professor Vogt states that there is a 100% chance that life will form. A body of water is all that it takes for life to form on a planet? Hmmm, I may be wrong, but it seems that life is little more difficult to create than having just a body of water. It's interesting to me that they are able to discover the possibility of water on a planet 20 light years away, and that they make a good guess as to its gravity. Science is amazing, but the quote that there is a 100% chance that life will form on Gliese 581g, is clearly overstated.

  2. Clues to God's Existence. I have been asked before what evidence is there to support God's existence. I believe that Intelligent Design is the best position to explain life on Earth. I may be wrong, but when it comes to either a naturalist explanation (like Darwinism) or a supernatural one, it seems to me that the supernatural explanation makes more sense. And the evidence of how Darwinism actually works, continues to support my understanding. As one writer submits, don't we have "astronomical numbers of organisms" in the real-world data collected in the cases of malaria, HIV and e-coli? In these cases, Random Mutation + Natural Selection produced only trivial changes and no other evolutionary processes came into play at all, despite strong selection pressures. In the case of e-coli, the data were produced in the lab over the space of about a decade. Isn't it likely that we'll have more and more sets of data of this kind as medical science proceeds? Why keep telling stories about how a Lexus evolved from a Ford and a Volvo when you can go inside the Lexus factory and actually observe workers assembling parts produced entirely in Japan?

    Well, I am reading a book by Pastor Timothy Keller entitled "The Reason for God", and it has a good way of describing "clues" of God. These are not proofs of God's existence. But instead they are strong clues that point to His existence. Divine fingerprints if you will. Here are a few:

  • Big Bang. Scientist Francis Collins writes, "15 billion years ago, the universe began with an unimaginably bright flash of energy from an infinitesimally small point. That implies that before that, there was nothing. I can't imagine how nature, ion this case the universe, could have created itself. And the very fact that the universe had a beginning implies that someone was able to begin it. And it seems to me that had to be outside of nature." Everything we see is 'contingent', meaning that there is a cause outside of itself. Why should the universe be any different? This makes a lot of sense to me, but it certainly is not a proof;


     

  • The Cosmic Welcome Mat. Keller: Everything about physics from the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the strength of weak and strong nuclear forces – must all have values that together fall into an extremely narrow range. This is called the "fine-tuning" of the universe, that makes it appear that the universe was prepared human beings. It seems as though there were a large number of dials that all had to be tuned to a narrow setting, and they all were turned to that setting. Again, this is not a proof. I'm sure there is a theoretical chance that there are billion upon billions of unobservable other universes out there. Yeah, sure. But the one universe that we can see, tells us that someone has made sure that life be created on Earth. The clues point to a Creator.


 

  • Love. Yes, it is possible that chemical reactions in our brain create an attraction to another person. But that doesn't tell half of the story. Chemical reaction doesn't explain my wife's love of someone like me who can be grumpy, selfish, and not give her the attention of love back to her that she deserves. Yet, she still loves me. Chemical reactions seem as a laughable explanation for love. We have free choice to love others in our life by our actions, or to make selfish, unloving choices to those around us. We don't get to blame our genetics for our choices.


 

And of course, God's example of sending His Son as a sacrifice to pay for all of the World's sins is the best example of love. The Gift of Jesus' sacrifice was made to allow people to be in relationship with God. No one is forced to believe or accept this gift. But if it is accepted this is the beginning of a grand adventure. A relationship with the Creator of the universe, who gives us jobs to do – to help others, and provide glory to God. And the relationship gives us what we need, peace, growing is purity, growing in our faith and knowledge of the Creator. It's a great plan, and it's open to everyone.

Thanks for those who email me with comments. May God bless you this week with His joy and peace. /s/Tom

6 comments:

Edward Oleander said...

Hello Tom,
This will be a multi-part response, because of Blogger's limits...

The "New Earth" - While i admit that saying there is a "100%" chance of life on this other planet is jumping the gun, he based that certainty on observations here on Earth:

1) Wherever there is water, there is life. Under conditions like the bottom of the ocean, without light, near a toxic vent, in water that reaches 800 degrees F, there is life. Miles down in Antarctic ice, there is life. Places that 20 years ago, we would have never believed it to be true. And once life takes hold, it doesn't let go. Read the studies of microbes found near nuclear blast test sites, and in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

2) This incredible range of life-supporting environments seems to suggest that life arises to fit the venue, not the other way around. The universe is hardly "fine-tuned" for humans... The universe, as a whole is so incredibly toxic to humans that we seem to be able to exist in one tiny, tiny part of it. Even if there are a billion Earths out there, that still would compromise so little of the known universe that I don't have enough room for all the zeros behind the decimal point.

3) The implications are that the life that would arise on another planet would be "fine-tuned" to that planet's particulars. Again, life forms WITHIN the boundaries it has to work with. Indeed, if we were to find a planet EXACTLY like Earth in makeup, it would point to ID, but I don't expect that to happen.

end part 1

Edward Oleander said...

Part 2...

" may be wrong, but when it comes to either a naturalist explanation (like Darwinism) or a supernatural one, it seems to me that the supernatural explanation makes more sense."

This just boggles the mind... WHY does it make more sense? Something that you CANNOT understand, CANNOT, by pure definition, make ANY sense at all... Saying that "God did it" is NO explanation at all... All it really means is that YOU have NO IDEA at all how the universe works.

Saying "Harry Potter waved his wand and brought the universe into being" has JUST as much validity as Irrational Design. By saying that a supernatural explanation makes more sense to you, you are saying that you understand enough about HOW GOD MADE THE UNIVERSE to make the God-theory more plausible than any naturalistic scenario... So tell me, Mighty Sage, HOW did God create anything out of nothing? If you can't do that, at least tell me exactly WHY Stephen Hawking is wrong. Show your work.

End of part 2...

Edward Oleander said...

Part 3...

"Everything we see is 'contingent', meaning that there is a cause outside of itself. Why should the universe be any different? This makes a lot of sense to me, but it certainly is not a proof;"

Your argument here just begs the question, "Where then, did God come from?" By your very own logic, God must have had a Creator, and so too must that Creator have had one... It's nothing but Creators, all the way down... So to use this argument, you MUST admit that YOUR God is not the most Omni-Everything in the universe(s), and even then, you STILL have not brought us any closer to a real explanation of how the universe came into being...

" Isn't it likely that we'll have more and more sets of data of this kind as medical science proceeds?"

It's funny how normally you have very little faith in the future discoveries of Science, but yet you show lots here... And the answer to your question is... NO! It isn't likely at all... Logic doesn't work that way, and Science doesn't either... I've tried to explain before why it is dangerous to move from the specific to the general... Single cell organisms that are extremely well-adapted to their existence cannot be compared to more complex creatures living in unstable environments. There simply is no basis for comparison... The answer to all your microbe factoids is... "So what?"...

End part 3...

Edward Oleander said...

Part 4...

"This is called the "fine-tuning" of the universe, that makes it appear that the universe was prepared [for] human beings."

This is a Big Lie, put out by religious Revisionists, and is nothing more than putting the cart before the horse. Our existence is as precarious as the next Ice Age. The "universe" asa whole is EXTREMELY hostile to human life. The Earth itself isn't all that friendly... There have been several mass extinctions where 75% or more all ALL species vanished. Our continuity is by no means a sure bet. The average species on Earth lasts only about 2 million years. The really long-lived complex species, like sharks, crocodiles, turles, horeshoe crabs and celocanths (sp?) are numbered in the dozens, not millions.

If the Earth is "fine-tuned" for anything it is the bacteria which you insist on using in your examples. There are plenty of examples of long-lived microbe species, so does that mean God is an amoeba? The life we find on other planets is far more likely going to be limited to one-celled creatures than it is ray-gun-toting Martians.

It is FAR more likely that life arises to fit the environment than it is that the environment was placed there to fit an incoming form of life. Saying that this universe was designed for human life is like saying that one of those Rube Goldberg machines that MIT creates every year is "designed" to do whatever they do...

In reality, those machines are meant to be absurd, and to perform their "functions" as inefficiently as possible. THAT is a much better analogy to the real universe... It is a random jumble of elements that has achieved some very-unreliable short-term stability. The number of things, on Earth or out in space, that could wipe us out is scary. Not very fine-tuned at all...

End of part 4...

Edward Oleander said...

Part 5(?) (I've been awake about 36 hours now so numbers are getting fuzzy)...

" Love... Chemical reaction doesn't explain my wife's love of someone like me ... Yet, she still loves me ..."

I'm going to prove that miracles DO happen, and let this golden opportunity slide... :-)

Actually, it's not that hard to understand. At the risk of sounding sappy, you really are a decent human being. While I can find all sorts of fault with your views and politics, I can find very few with your character, integrity, and compassion.

One of my biggest issues with most religions, and Christianity in particular, is the use of guilt and shame to control people. You have to wonder why all these gods need to grind your self-esteem into the dirt in order to get you to follow Them...

"We don't get to blame our genetics for our choices."

That is dogmatic wishful thinking and about as accurate as saying Pi = 4...

The evidence is overwhelming, at all levels, anecdotal, observed, and regression analysis, that genetic makeup can and will influence our choices. The most famous and often quoted are the various studies of twins, especially those raised in different homes and having no contact with the other twin, who grow up and turn out to have nearly identical tastes and having made nearly identical choices for careers, spouses, sociopolitical views, etc...

Yes, we make many decisions, and genetics is never a valid defense in court for crimes committed, but those choices we make are influenced and delimited by WHAT we are as well as WHO we are...

Thanks for wading through all of these. I have 3-4 more weeks until I can drive again, and I will celebrate my freedom by buying breakfast when we can rope John in too...

Pax,
~E~

tom wolff said...

Hi Ed, sometimes I think you like to pull my chain. You say that Professor Vogt "jumped the gun" when he said that the newly discovered planet with water on it has a 100% chance of life. Then you go on to say that "wherever there is water, there is life."

As you know, forming life is what appears to be an impossible task. Wikipedia (abiogenesis) says that there are 2 major hurdles for life to begin - replication / life, and metabolism, or as I understand it having a way to power the functions of a living cell. Just having water around doesn't clear these hurdles.

Oh, and just for yucks, I googled the Harvard Abiogenesis project, which is throwing alot of money to studying the science of the beginning of life, and not much has happened since 2005 when the project started. They have made some synthetic parts of the cell, but I didn't see much more than that. And, btw didn't the thought of "Spontaneous Generation" of life die in the 1800's after Pasteur's research? It seems to me that life behets life, and nothing else does.