Evidence of Purpose: Scientists Discover the Creator - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826406491 ISBN 13: 9780826406491

Verlag: TEMPLETON FOUNDATION PR, 1994

Inhaltsangabe

For nearly a century, the central theological message of science seemed to be that there was no need for theology: science could stand alone to explain the universe. But today, that message is changing. In this volume, a gallery of respected scientists describes new developments in their fields and their relationship with theological views of the universe. Contributors include Owen Gingerich, Russell Stannard, Paul Davies, Walter R. Hearn, Robert Russell, Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, John C. Eccles, Daniel H. Osmond, and David Wilcox.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

As a pioneer in both financial investments and philanthropy, Sir John Templeton spent a lifetime encouraging open-mindedness. Templeton started his Wall Street career in 1937 and went on to create some of the world’s largest and most successful international investment funds, eventually earning the label of “arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century” from Money magazine. In 1972, he established the world’s largest annual award given to an individual: the £1,000,000 Templeton Prize. The Prize is intended to recognize exemplary achievement in work related to life’s spiritual dimension. Templeton also contributed a sizable amount of his fortune to the John Templeton Foundation, which he established in 1987. Templeton passed away in 2008, but the Foundation that bears his name continues to award millions of dollars in annual grants in pursuit of its mission to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for research on what scientists and philosophers call the “big questions.”

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Evidence of Purpose

Scientists Discover the Creator

By John Marks Templeton

Continuum

Copyright © 1994 Templeton Foundation, Inc. (NJ) and Robert L. Herrmann
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8264-0649-1

Contents

Introduction, 
1 Dare a Scientist Believe in Design? Owen Gingerich, 
2 God's Purpose in and Beyond Time Russell Stannard, 
3 The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Science Paul Davies, 
4 Evidence of Purpose in the Universe Walter R. Hearn, 
5 Cosmology: Evidence for God or Partner for Theology? Robert John Russell, 
6 Science and God the Creator Arthur Peacocke, 
7 A Potent Universe John Polkinghorne, 
8 The Evolution of Purpose John C. Eccles, 
9 A Physiologist Looks at Purpose and Meaning in Life Daniel H. Osmond, 
10 How Blind the Watchmaker? David Wilcox, 
Endnotes, 
Contributors, 

CHAPTER 1

Owen Gingerich

Dare a Scientist Believe in Design?

Conus cedonulli is, literally, the "I yield to none" cone. In the eighteenth century this handsomely patterned shell became the most celebrated and sought-after molluscan rarity. Two specimens were known in Europe in the early 1700s, one of which became the prize of the king of Portugal's collection. In 1796 the other was auctioned for 243 guilders at a sale in which Vermeer's masterpiece, "Woman in Blue Reading a Letter," fetched a mere 43 guilders!

Cone shells, cedonulli among them, are considered among the most "advanced" mollusks because their anatomy includes a toxic harpoon that can spring out of the apex end of the shell. In some species the sting can be deadly even to humans.

Our first reaction upon hearing about the cone shells may well be: what wonderful design! And we may be even more impressed and probably puzzled to learn that the exquisite pattern on the shell is, during the animal's lifetime, covered by an opaque periostracum, rendering the pattern virtually invisible and therefore perplexingly useless either for survival or sexual attraction. To think in terms of deliberate design is an almost intuitive response, yet such thoughts have become strangely taboo in contemporary scientific circles. Conus cedonulli thus becomes a jumping-off place for consideration of the question, "Dare a scientist believe in design?"

Consider what happened when a report on studies of the mollusk toxins recently appeared in Science magazine (along with an illustration of both Conus cedonulli and the Vermeer painting). A supplementary news article, entitled "Science Digests the Secrets of Voracious Killer Snails" remarked that "the great diversity and specificity of toxins in the venoms of the cone snails are due to the intense evolutionary pressure on the snails to stop their prey quickly, since they can't chase it down."

Very promptly a letter to the editor objected that this language implied that some real pressure was driving the snails to develop the toxins. "The reality is that those snails that produced toxins that immobilized their prey quickly tended to obtain food more often than those possessing slower-acting or no toxins, and thus over time the population of cone shells became dominated by those possessing the fast-acting agents. There was no pressure! In the vernacular, 'If it works, it works; if it don't, it don't.'"

The response shows clearly the current philosophical orthodoxy about the nondirected nature of evolution. It also typifies the enormous change of view that has occurred over the past century with respect to the wonders of the biological world.

What is now seen as the zigzag, largely accidental path to amazing organisms with astonishing adaptations was in earlier times routinely interpreted as the design of an intelligent Creator. The long neck of the giraffe, which so well adapts the creature to an environment where food is available high off the ground, would have been seen, in William Paley's words, as a "mark of contrivance, in proof of design, and of a designing Creator." "Who gave white bears and white wolves to the snowy regions of the North, and as food for the bears the whale, and for the wolves, birds' eggs?" asked Johannes Kepler two centuries earlier. "Great is our Lord and great his virtue and of his wisdom there is no number!" he exclaims in answer. "Use every sense for perceiving your Creator."

Even Jean-Jacques Rousseau, not best known as a theist, declared, "It is impossible for me to conceive that a system of beings can be so wisely regulated without the existence of some intelligent cause which affects such regulation.... I believe, therefore, that the world is governed by a wise and powerful Will."

The notion of design suggests, of course, the existence of a goal-directed or end-directed process, what can aptly be termed teleology. Ernst Mayr, a leading evolutionist who has written very clearly on the modern philosophy of evolution, wisely remarks that it is futile to attempt to clarify the concept of teleology without discriminating between different types of end-directed processes. There are some kinds of inanimate natural processes that do have an end point, for example, and there are also goal-directed processes in genetically controlled organisms. "The third category, organic adaptness, is not directed toward an end but rather an adaptation to the environment in the widest sense of the word, acquired during evolution, largely guided by natural selection. The fourth teleology, the cosmic one, is not supported by scientific evidence." So much then, for a role for the Creator in modern biology.

"Man was not the goal of evolution, which evidently had no goal," wrote G. G. Simpson in a more visceral fashion. "He was not planned, in an operation wholly planless."

Yet, despite the articulate denials of cosmic teleology by the leading evolutionists of our age, there still remain enough astonishing details of the natural order to evoke a feeling of awe—so much so that cosmologists have even given it a name: the anthropic principle. The discussion arose originally when some physicists noticed that even small variations in some of the constants of nature would have led to a universe in which life could not exist. For example, had the original energy of the Big Bang explosion been less, the universe would have fallen back onto itself long before there had been time to build the elements required for life and to produce from them intelligent, sentient beings. Had the energy been more, it is quite possible that the density would have dropped too swiftly for stars and galaxies to form. These and many other details were so extraordinarily right that it seemed the universe had been expressly designed for humankind. Such was the original context that led to the anthropic principle.

One of the first scientists to consider how the environment itself made life possible was the Harvard chemist L.J. Henderson. Early in this century, after Darwin's emphasis on the fitness of organisms for their various environments, Henderson wrote a fascinating book entitled The Fitness of the Environment, which pointed out that the organisms themselves would not exist except for certain properties of matter. He argued for the uniqueness of carbon as the chemical basis of life, and everything we have learned since then, from the nature of the hydrogen bond to the structure of DNA, reinforces his argument. But today it is possible to go still further and to probe the origin of carbon itself, through its synthesis deep inside evolving stars.

Carbon is the fourth most common atom...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: TEMPLETON FOUNDATION PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1994
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0826406491
• ISBN 13: 9780826406491
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 212
• Herausgeber: Templeton John Marks
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar