God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion (30 page)

Once computers were available it became possible to simulate the behavior of such systems, and in the process certain principles began to “emerge.” The most important was what is termed the butterfly effect, whereby the tiniest change in the initial conditions of the system would result in a dramatic change in the behavior of the system. It was as if the flap of a butterfly's wings could change the weather two weeks from now. The phenomenon was somewhat misleadingly termed
chaos.

As discussed in
chapter 6
, this feature of chaotic systems is often misunderstood as implying that some macroscopic systems are indeterministic, that is, their behavior cannot be predicted. In fact, chaotic systems obey classical Newtonian mechanics and so are fully deterministic and predictable
in principle.

The fundamental predictability of chaotic systems can be demonstrated by computer simulations. As long as you start the system at
exactly
the same place in the simulation, it will end up at the same place. In fact, it was a loss of precision due to numerical rounding in a primitive computer simulation of the atmosphere developed by meteorologist Edward Lorenz in 1961 that led to the discovery of chaos.
²⁶
Actual physical systems such as the atmosphere are unpredictable in practice because we can never measure the initial conditions precisely enough to make a prediction more than a short time into the future.

In short, while it is true that the principles at most of the levels of higher complexity above particle physics cannot be derived from the equations of particle physics alone, we have examples where we can determine so-called emergent principles, either mathematically or on the computer, from basic physics. The fact that we cannot derive the principles at every level does not imply that some new metaphysics must be behind those principles. One needs more than yet another God-of-the-gaps argument to justify such an extraordinary claim.

SELF-ORGANIZATION

No doubt self-organization occurs in nature. It is a common feature of complex systems. Many examples can be found in biology, but we need to emphasize that this feature is not limited to living organisms. When a wet foam composed of spherical bubbles dries out, the bubbles become polyhedral. When a liquid is heated from below, it spontaneously develops a pattern of hexagonal circulating cells. Turbulence in the atmosphere of the giant planet Jupiter has produced a coherent structure called the Great Red Spot that has persisted for at least three hundred years and probably much longer. From snowflakes to Saturn's rings, self-organization in material systems is ubiquitous. For many beautiful examples see
The Self-Made Tapestry: Pattern Formation in Nature
by Philip Ball.
²⁷

For a simple example, picture an expanse of sand on a beach near the waterline that has been smoothed by waves washing over it. Now, let the tide go out and let the sun dry the sand. Suppose the wind then picks up and blows across the sand. The wind obviously has no complex structure to it, but an intricate pattern of ripples in the sand will be produced. The spectacular sand dunes in a desert are examples of the same phenomenon.

In a second book,
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another
, Ball shows remarkable examples of self-organization in social systems.
²⁸
One important point he makes concerns the role of randomness in the process. Many systems are
metastable
, that is, they stay the way they are until perturbed. For example, fast-moving traffic will flow smoothly in collective fashion until a random fluctuation causes the density of vehicles to increase above a certain critical value. The flow rate then drops drastically, the traffic becoming congested as the density increases until the traffic grinds to a halt.

This is an example of what is called
self-organized criticality
. Instead of change occurring smoothly, in many cases it occurs catastrophically. The snow on the side of a mountain piles up until it reaches a critical mass and produces an avalanche. No wonder that people, with their caveman brains, attribute agency to such events. The question of God's actions versus natural phenomena is a primary place where science and religion part company.

While it is true that we can't take the equations of the standard model
of elementary particles and forces to derive the fact of the emergence of life, a clear line from physics to biology can be seen. Life still can be
reduced
to the same quarks and electrons.

An ancient belief that remains implicit in much theological thinking holds that some fundamental difference between life and nonlife exists, that some spark of life, an
élan vital
, or vital force—or soul—must be inserted into matter to make it alive. A remnant of this notion can be found in the way chemists still make a distinction between inorganic chemistry and organic chemistry, where the latter refers to all substances containing carbon. In 1828, German chemist Friedrich Wöhler (died 1882) synthesized urea in the laboratory, demonstrating that no vital force was necessary to generate organic compounds.
²⁹

None of the life sciences has ever found any difference in composition between living and nonliving matter. A living cell is made of the same quarks and electrons as a rock. A living cell and a rock are described by the same laws of physics and chemistry. No laboratory measurement has ever revealed a “living force” or “bioenergetic field” that makes life unique. Life seems to occur when a system of many particles reaches a certain level of complexity so that it is able to perform the various tasks we associate with a living organism.

Evolution itself, in its well-established formulation, demonstrates this progression from simple to complex—although, as we have noted, it need not always work in the direction of more complexity. Any given complex system would have to start as a simple system, if it were not divinely designed. If it were divinely designed, it would have to spring into existence with full complexity just as the Bible says. But the data, which D'Souza and Conway Morris would like to interpret as evidence for design, overwhelmingly support the opposite conclusion.

The natural progression from simple to complex can be found in all matter, not just the biological. In the absence of external heat (energy), the natural, unaided process of phase transitions in matter is from vapor to liquid to solid. This progression can be seen to occur from greater to lesser symmetry. Complex structure is basically broken symmetry.

These effects are easy to understand. Gases are highly symmetric and uniform because the energies involved in the interactions between molecules are weak compared to their kinetic energies. So the particles of the gas statistically
fill all the position and momentum states available. That's why most gases behave much the same. But for systems with less kinetic energy (lower temperature), the molecular interactions are not just momentary collisions. The characteristics of the molecular structure and interaction come to dominate the macroscopic characteristics, and complexity is generated.

Life occurs in liquid water because there the molecules are close for a sufficient duration to interact but still have enough energy to change configurations. So, while the potential is there to produce life, that potential lies in the ability of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and so on, to form complex structures in liquid water. There's nothing mysterious about that—it is predictable from reductionist physics. No new principle beyond standard particle mechanics need be invoked.

I would like to correct a common misrepresentation that appears frequently in the apologetic literature concerning the positions that Dawkins and I have taken on the source of complexity.
³⁰
In referring to my book
God: The Failed Hypothesis
,
³¹
chemist Edgar Andrews says, “Doesn't Dr. Stenger's idea that simplicity begets complexity totally contradict Richard Dawkins's argument that God, having created an exceedingly complex universe, must be even more complex and thus highly improbable?” Simply, no.

Here's exactly what Dawkins said:

A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough to demand the same kind of explanation in his own right. God presents an infinite regress from which he cannot help us escape. This argument…demonstrates that God, though not technically disprovable, is very, very improbable indeed.
³²

The point Dawkins was making is that if Dembski,
³³
Behe,
³⁴
and their supporters in the intelligent design movement are correct that complexity can
only
arise from higher complexity, then God would be even more complex and an explanation would then have to be found for his complexity. But Dawkins does not believe for a moment that this is the case. I have personally checked with him to confirm that he agrees with my interpretation of his words. No one has been more eloquent than Richard Dawkins in describing
how complexity arises from simplicity in biology, so it is ludicrous to say he supports the intelligent design view.

Incidentally, when Dawkins says the existence of God is “technically unprovable,” he is also not disagreeing with me. I concur that we cannot disprove the existence of all conceivable gods by logic alone. The argument I presented in
God: The Failed Hypothesis
—that God does not exist beyond a reasonable doubt—is a scientific one. It is based on the fact that the theist (as opposed to the deist) God should be detectable by his actions in the world but has not been.

Now, as with the first cause argument of Aristotle and Aquinas, an infinite regress is avoided by saying that God had no prior cause or designer. But once you accept the logical possibility that an entity exists that had no prior cause or designer, then you have to prove why that entity can't be a godless universe.

In any case, Christian apologists are tilting at windmills. It is an incontrovertible fact about the natural world that simpler systems evolve into more complex ones without always needing the hand of a conscious craftsman.

STRONG EMERGENCE

Still, we find physicists, biologists, and theologians claiming some teleological principle in nature. In his 2004 book
The Cosmic Blueprint
, physicist, prolific author, and 1995 Templeton Prize winner Paul Davies says, “As more attention is devoted to the study of self-organization and complexity in nature, so it is becoming clear that there must be new general principles—organizing principles over and above the known laws of physics—which have yet to be discovered.”
³⁵

South African cosmologist, Quaker, and 2004 Templeton Prize winner George Ellis has described two forms of causal action as we move from one level to another in the hierarchy of complex structure in matter. In
bottom-up action
, what happens at each level is caused by functioning from the next level below. In
top-down
action
, the higher level of the hierarchy directs what happens at the lower levels.
³⁶
Theologian Philip Clayton refers to the first as
weak emergence
and to the second as
strong emergence
.
³⁷

Weak emergence certainly occurs. The examples given previously, such as thermodynamics, exhibit bottom-up causality. The late prominent biochemist and theologian Arthur Peacocke defined
emergent monism
as the doctrine in which “naturally occurring, hierarchical, complex systems [are] constituted of parts that themselves are, at the lowest level, made up of the basic units of the physical world.”
³⁸
This sounds like weak emergence, but later in the same article he amplifies his definition to encompass strong emergence: “[Emergent monism views the world as] a hierarchy of interlocking complex systems and it has come to be recognized that these complex systems have a determinative effect, an exercising therefore of causal powers, on their components—a whole-part influence.”
³⁹

Peacocke recognized that weak emergence is not what theologians are seeking. They want “a more substantial ground for attributing reality to higher level properties and the organized entities associated with them” and for this to possess a distinctive “causal (I [Peacocke] would say rather ‘determinative’) efficacy of the complex wholes that has the effect of making the separated, constituent parts behave in ways they would not do if they were not part of that particular complex system.”
⁴⁰
Theologians want strong emergence.

Ellis gives as an example of strong emergence the gas in a cylinder with a piston, in which the position of the piston determines the gas pressure and temperature. This is easily dismissed since the temperature and pressure can be calculated using the equations of thermodynamics derived in statistical particle mechanics.

What Ellis, Clayton, Peacocke, and other supernaturalists are desperately seeking is an example from science where a high-level system produces an effect at a lower level that cannot occur without some new principle coming in at that level. Then they can extend that notion to the very top level—to heaven with God himself acting down to control everything that happens below. Let's face it, downward causation is just Aristotelian “final cause,” renamed because of the disrepute that the term has suffered at the hands of the scientific revolution.

Ellis's other examples include nucleosynthesis in the early universe, the collapse of the wave function, evolution, biological development, influence of mind on the body, and influence of mind on the world. Ellis doesn't mention one that I have heard before: how spinning a bicycle wheel causes the particles
in the tire to move in a circle. All but one of Ellis's examples can be accounted for reductionistically within existing materialistic models.