Issue 10.12 | December 2002
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The New Convergence (continued)
Numerous other areas of contemporary science sound like supernaturalism dressed up. Researchers studying the motions of spiral galaxies have found that the stars and gas clouds within them behave as though they're subject to 20 times more force than can be explained by the gravity from observed matter. This has led to the assumption now close to a scientific consensus that much of the cosmos is bound up in an undetectable substance provisionally called dark matter. The ratio of dark to regular matter may be as high as 6 to 1.
Other experiments suggest that as much as two-thirds of the content of the universe may crackle with an equally mysterious dark energy. In 1998, astronomers were surprised to discover that, contrary to expectations, cosmic expansion isn't slowing as the momentum of the big bang peters out. Instead, it appears to be speeding up. Something very powerful is causing the galaxies to fly apart faster all the time.
Then there's the Higgs field. In an attempt to explain the ultimate source of mass, some theorists propose that the universe is permeated by an undiscovered field that confers mass on what would otherwise be zero-mass particles. The Superconducting Supercollider project, canceled in 1993, was intended to test this hypothesis.
These and other mystery forces seem to function based on nothing. That notion, now a fact of life among physicists and cosmologists, would have been considered ridiculous just a few generations ago. Yet Judeo-Christian theology has been teaching for millennia that God made the universe ex nihilo out of nothing. Maybe these forces work in a wholly natural manner that simply hasn't yet been determined. Certainly, there's a better chance of finding observational evidence for theories of physics than theories of theology. But for the moment, many believers find physics trending in their direction, while physicists themselves are left to ponder transcendent effects they can't explain.
Physicists and theologians hold chummy conferences and drink sherry together, but most biologists still want little to do with spiritual thought, and the feeling is mutual on the part of many believers. More than three-quarters of a century after John Scopes stood trial for teaching evolution, Darwin's theory remains a flash point. Only in September, creationists urged Congress to enact legislation supporting the teaching of alternatives to evolution in public schools.
The battle between evolutionary biology and faith isn't inevitable. As genome researcher Collins says, "I am unaware of any irreconcilable conflict between scientific knowledge about evolution and the idea of a creator God. Why couldn't God use the mechanism of evolution to create?" Mainstream Protestant denominations and most branches of Judaism accept Darwin, and in 1996, Pope John Paul II called Darwin's work "more than just a hypothesis."
Even Christian fundamentalism wasn't always anti-Darwin. When the American movement began at the start of the 20th century, its trumpet call was a popular series of pamphlets called The Fundamentals, which were to the decade of the 1910s what the Left Behind series of evangelical novels is today. According to The Fundamentals, evolution illustrated the subtle beauty of God's creative power.
The tide began to turn a decade later, however, when William Jennings Bryan began preaching against Darwinism. He was influenced by a 1923 book, The New Geology, which argued that Earth's apparently ancient age was an artifact created by God to test people's faith. Moreover, Bryan had just spent a year in Germany and was horrified by the incipient Nazi movement, which used social Darwinism now discredited, but then fashionable on the left as well as the right to assert that it was only natural for the strong to kill the weak. His crusade against evolutionary theory led to the Scopes trial in 1925, which cemented into American culture the notion that Darwin and religion were opposing forces.
Espousing a theory known as intelligent design, molecular biologist Michael Behe and others are attempting to forge a synthesis. Often though inaccurately described as creationism lite, intelligent design admits that evolution operates under current conditions but emphasizes that Darwin is silent on how those conditions came to be. Science doesn't have the slightest idea how life began. No generally accepted theory exists, and the steps leading from a barren primordial world to the fragile chemistry of life seem imponderable.
The late biologist Gerald Soffen, who oversaw the life-seeking experiments carried out by NASA's Viking probes to Mars, once outlined the early milestones in the evolution of living processes: development of organic compounds, self-replication of those compounds, appearance of cells isolating the compounds from their environment, photosynthesis enabling cells to use the sun's energy, and the assembly of DNA. "It's hard to imagine how these things could have happened," Soffen told me before his death in 2000. "Once you reach the point of a single-cell organism with genes, evolution takes command. But the early leaps they're very mysterious."
Intelligent design trades on this insight to propose that only a designer could create life in the first place. The theory is spiritual, but it's not bound by Scripture, as creationism is. A designer is a nondenominational, ecumenical possibility, not a dogmatic formula.
Did a designer set Earth's life processes in motion? Few questions are more interesting or intellectually rich. Because the evolution debate is so rancorous, however, the how-did-life-begin question is usually lost amid shouting matches between orthodox Darwinians and hard-line creationists.
The biotech era may change this. Biologists and fundamentalists may still want to hurl bricks at one another, but there's no dodging the immediate questions of biological engineering, stem-cell research, transgenic animals, and so on. What is life? Do individual cells have rights? Do human beings have the right to alter human DNA? Is it wise to reengineer the biosphere?
The need to grope our collective way through such quandaries may force theologians, church leaders, biologists, and philosophers to engage one another. Perhaps this debate will get hopelessly hung up in doctrine, for instance on the question of whether life begins when sperm meets egg. But there is at least an equal chance that the pressure of solving biotech questions will force science and theology to find the reasonable points of either field. Unlike cosmology, which poses fascinating questions whose answers have no effect on daily life, biotech will affect almost everyone in an immediate way. A science-and-religion reconciliation on this subject may be needed to write research rules, physician ethics, and, ultimately, law.
Oh, and what did Einstein think about this issue? He said, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Einstein was neither convinced there is a God nor convinced there is not; he sensed that it's far too early in the human quest for knowledge to do more than speculate on transcendent questions. Science, which once thought the case for higher power was closed, is now trending back toward his view.
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