Friday quote: Theology in a scientific journal
by KrauzeRemember Richard Sternberg, the editor who got in hot water for allowing a paper arguing for intelligent design to be published in a scientific journal, where intelligent design was "out of place" Fortunately, other editors enjoy looser reigns. In the article "Intelligent design and biological complexity" in the journal Gene, molecular biologist at Stanford University Emile Zuckerkandl writes not only about intelligent design (he thinks it's an "intellectual virus") but even about the attributes of God:
Time implies change. Without change, there probably is no time. Time and change as unavoidable conditions of existence would have had to impose themselves upon that "higher intelligence" that is being peddled to the public. If the higher intelligence had to conform to time, then why not to the other dimensions of nature? It looks as though beyond the ascendancy of nature any other power may be superfluous – and inherently limited. Since life in particular could under no conditions be created instantaneously – biology makes this abundantly clear, because certain required simultaneities can only result from a history – no God can be almighty.
A few questions: How does speculations about intelligent design and theology fit in with the description of Gene as dealing with "structural, functional, and evolutionary aspects of genes, chromatin, chromosomes and genomes" Will Gene be opening a forthcoming issue to a reply from theologians, defending the almightiness of God? Will Mike finally find a publisher for his ground-breaking research?
(Hat tip to reader Analyysi for alerting me to this article.)
January 26th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Good point. How does speculating on the Almightiness of God have anything to do whatsoever with a science journal on gene-related topics? If that's fair game, then they have absolutely no credibility at all when it comes to forbidding ID from having a voice. Period.
Comment by Jared White — January 26, 2007 @ 2:04 pm
January 26th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Do these "required simultaneities" include that which is necessary to make a cell possible? How does history document the impossibility of a bio-engineered initial life form? The natural history inferences are as poor as the theology. How did this get past peer review? Will NAS now initiate a campaign against the publisher for allowing this non-scientific paper?
Comment by Bradford — January 26, 2007 @ 3:24 pm
January 26th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
What is not seen by people like Zuckerkandl is that God is not a description of an entity living inside the universe but rather a pointer towards the rules and lawfulness manifesting itself through the universe.
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 26, 2007 @ 3:39 pm
January 26th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
My question is "What is the scientific definition of 'Almighty'?"
Comment by macht — January 26, 2007 @ 6:27 pm
January 26th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
??? What's he arguing against, theology or physics? Of what 'stuff' is intelligence made? Who defined time as entropy over sequential measurements of 3-space coordinates for an object relative to past and present relativities? That would make time an artifact of thermodynamics, not a fundamental of space-time.
…and who decided that all possible forms of existence are limited to 3+1 dimensions? Last I checked, physics was leaning toward somewhere between 8 and 22 dimensions just to explain the existence and properties of the matter/energy that accounts for our measly <5% of the universe (what we can perceive/measure). They're still stumped by what the 'other' ~95% might be, and have barely started on consciousness. Heck, they can't even agree on a definition (one participant predicts only 200 years for that, despite a multi-thousand year history of conscious disagreement on the same issue).
While it's true that the NDS likes to ignore physics whenever it makes absurd claims, it has never even been close to usurping physics as the scientific arbiter of theories about the nature of reality. It also may be true that the nature of reality (in the end) boils down to the true nature of time. But I don't expect bad anti-theologians from Neodarwinian Orthodoxy to define these things for the purpose of making a logically, metaphysically and philosophically dubious assertion -
Science? I see no science here.
Comment by Joy — January 26, 2007 @ 7:02 pm
January 26th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
I read this article a while back and, yes, I agree it wanders well outside the bounds of what is appropriate material for scientific discourse. I remember cringing upon reading the theological speculations in particular. On the other hand, Dr. Z is an esteemed figure who has made a number of important contributions to molecular biology and whose health–at least judging from the last time I saw him at a conference–is very fragile. I suspect these two factors combined to allow some flexibility in the normal editorial process. Still, the editors dropped the ball by not gently discouraging certain aspects of the article. This does not help Gene's image in the community, which is currently not very good.
Comment by great_ape — January 26, 2007 @ 9:09 pm
January 27th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
MatthewCromer,
Most would suggest that God is an entity living outside the universe — and, many would say, outside of time itself. Its kinda hard for an entity living inside the universe, or an entity that is in itself the universe, to cause the universe to instigate time. As modern physics understands it, that is part of what happened in the big bang — time was initiated.
Comment by bFast — January 27, 2007 @ 11:15 pm