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Anthropic Principle: EMERGENCE AND ROLE OF WATER ON EARTH
Most of the earth surface is covered by water (70.8%) and is essential in the biological life support.
To start with, water came within the rocks that formed the earth in the early stages, at about 5% ratio which is also the ratio of water to earth today. Then under pressure and heat in the depths of the earth it came out through volcanoes as steam to form the oceans, and some gases. If the average temperature of the surface were much higher than the average 25 degrees Celsius, there would have been a great possibility that the vapors of water would have mixed with carbon dioxide in atmosphere in such a way that infrared radiation would be trapped into heating the earth to temperature possibly near to that of Venus which melts lead. Fortunately, the interplay between condensing vapors and the atmospheric elements was such that the warm vapors actually served to decrease the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere and the resulting water cloud formation served as a filter and reflector between the sun's brilliant rays and the earth surface, thereby maintaining the cooler condition necessary for a habitable planet. Because of the
earth's inclination of 23-1/2 degrees towards the sun, some water never
freezes, some ice never melts as at the poles and some water freezes in winter
and melts in summer, thereby creating a far more diversified biological
variety. Ice is the only substance in the universe to expand at cold, therefore
floating, otherwise it would gradually sink to the bottom killing perhaps most
life. The oceans temper the atmosphere world wide through their more constant
temperature and through currents forced by cold water dropping to bottom and
warm water raising. Gulf Stream is one such current without which Europe would
be a frozen waste land like Snow is a marvelous insulator with its exquisite and countless flake designs, protecting the ground from excessive freezing.. It would be difficult to sustain life under or above ground covered with ice. Snow also stores water for spring time when it is needed and since it melts slowly it penetrates the ground better than a downpour although some causes flooding if at times. It had been calculated that if the earth would have been 5% closer to the sun we would be frying by the greenhouse effect, and if only 1% further we would be freezing. If the earth orbit would be a little more elliptical we would freeze and fry within one year because the range between freezing and boiling is less than 2% of the medial temperature range measured in the universe.
Earth gravity is strong enough to hold the water (and everything else) from escaping in space through centrifugal force at a velocity under 7 miles per second. The oceans now formed could only sustain aquatic life for land life the water must rise as vapor, then wind is needed to move the clouds overland, to drop as rain, penetrate the earth, part rises through the capillary vessels, part forms underground reserves and part goes in the lakes and rivers, and the morning dew insures a minimum of humidity daily. Water is also transparent which allows photosynthesis up to 50 meters depth, and sound travel 4-1/2 times faster for better orientation and communication through, visual, sonar and hearing senses. Deadly ultra violet rays could only penetrate a few millimeters in water therefore allowing life to develop in oceans before we had an atmosphere and Whenever lightning flashes through the air, it momentarily heats the air around it to unusually high temperatures. The air quickly cools down, but before it does so, the heat forces the combination of molecules of nitrogen and oxygen in the air, forming nitrogen dioxide. This dissolves in water, (it is usually raining at the time) to form nitric acid, which produces a kind of acid rain. When the nitric acid reaches the ground it is converted into nitrates, and this helps fertilize the earth and makes land life possible. It was calculated that each lightning produces about a thousands trillion, trillion molecules of nitrogen dioxide. This is about 100 lbs. of material. And, on the average, about one hundred lightings strikes the earth per second. This means that lightning is producing about five and a half tons of nitrogen oxide per second. Franzblau and Popp calculated that this means that lightning supplies the earth not with 10% of the nitrogen oxide that life consumes but 50%. The reminder is synthesized in the soil by bacteria which can use nitrogen in other forms. The moon gravitational field raises the oceans by about one meter or more depending on the sun's position and it help some aquatic life to feed shelter or reproduce. If the moon were much closer to earth it would produce catastrophic tidal waves destroying everything in it's path far inland. The T-Taury violent solar wind occurred after the earth was formed but before the volcanoes produced water and gases otherwise all water and gases would have been blown away in space. If even one single element was missing from all these, we wouldn't be here to debate how we came to be. Quotes from: STEPHEN HAWKING' UNIVERSE By John Boslough. Gravity controls the biggest objects in the universe the stars, the planets, you and me. The other three that scientists uncovered operate at the subatomic level: the strong nuclear force trillions of times more powerful than gravitation, holds the nucleus of an atom together; electromagnetism keeps the electrons in place around the nucleus, making ordinary matter seem solid; the weak nuclear force causes radioactive decay in certain atoms like uranium. Pg. 16 More than a few scientists think that the facts of the Big Bang, as they are slowly discovered, could at the very least suggest the work of a Creator or a Creative Force. It may soon become evident that science will never be able to take us to the exact moment of creation-only up to the point where philosophy, metaphysics and theology begin. Stephen Hawking has made a tentative foray into this uncertain area. "The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous." he told me. "I think there are clearly religious implications whenever you start to discuss the origin of the universe. There must be religious overtones. But I think most scientists prefer to shy away from the religious side of it. Pg. 121 Hawking together with Brandon Carter and other colleagues, discovered that an extremely delicate balance exists in nature. For instance, if strong forces that act on the quarks, neutrons and protons of the atomic nucleus were slightly weaker, the only element that would be stable would by hydrogen. No other elements could exist. If the strong force were just a bit stronger in relation to electromagnetism, the force that regulate the way leptons like electrons and neutrinos behave, then an atomic nucleus containing just two protons-a-diproton- would become a stable feature of the universe. That would mean that hydrogen would not exist, and the stars and galaxies would have never evolved, if at all far differently from the way they have. Pg. 122 The growth of the universe so close to the border between collapse and eternal expansion that man has not been able to measure, it has been just at the proper rate to allow galaxies and stars to form. "In fact" said Hawking "a universe like ours with galaxies and stars is quite unlikely. If one consider the possible constants and laws that could have emerged , the odds against a universe that has produced life like ours are immense. Pg. 123 Consider the odds of shaking the parts of a watch in a barrel and having them fall into place as a working timepiece. Is that the kind of event that led to the Big Bang? Is our universe an enormous reversal of entropy? Or is it-literally-a miracle? Pg.123 Wheeler agrees with Hawking and Carter that our own universe is uniquely fine-tuned to produce life, even if in just one small, lost corner. Pg. 125 Recently some physicists have to come to see a relationship between their work and the ideas behind ,Eastern mysticism. They believe that the paradoxes, odds and probabilities as well as the observer-dependence of the quantum mechanics have been anticipated in the writings of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Quantum mechanics these so-called new physicists are fond of pointing out, is really only a rediscovery of Shiva or Mahadeva, the Hindu horned god of destruction and cosmic dissolution. (The whole page follows with intricate details, too many for a quote.) Pg.126 The whole solar system is made of protons and neutrons without any antiprotons or antineutrons. Indeed such imbalance between particles and antiparticles is yet another "a priory" condition for our existence, for if the solar system were composed of an equal mixture of particles and antiparticles, they would all annihilate each other and leave just radiation. Pg. 142
COSMIC COINCIDENCES By John Gribbin and Martin Rees Each atom has zero net electrical charge, because the positive charge on each proton is exactly balanced by the negative charge on an electron in the atom. (Some people see this exact balance between the charge of an electron and the charge of a proton as a remarkable coincidence in its own right). Pg. 6 It is worth spelling just how delicate the balances between the basic forces that permit our existence really are. For example, if the nuclear forces that control the behaviour of the protons and neutrons within the nucleus of an atom, were slightly stronger than they actually are, compared with the electrical forces, then the di-proton (an atomic nucleus composed of two protons) would be stable. Pg. 9 Iron, carbon, oxygen and the rest are all products of stellar nucleosynthesis, a process that is sensitive to several apparent accidents of physics, as Fred Hoyle pointed out in the 1950's. The universe seems to be set up in such a way that interesting things happen in it. Imagine for instance tinkering with the universe by varying the strength of gravity. A greater or weaker gravity, and we wouldn't be here to debate it. Pg. 10 This is the mildest form of what is now known as anthropic reasoning, anthropic cosmology or anthropic principle. The universe has been fine tuned to an extreme precision to produce living creatures with consciousness and intelligence, like us. Pg.11 There is something very curious about the fact that the universe has expanded away from the Big Bang at just the right speed to allow galaxies, stars and planets to form, and for carbon based life forms to exist on at least one of these planets. It is a puzzle that it is almost too obvious to seem worthy of attention-why is there anything interesting here at all. It has to do with how much matter the universe contain, and how fast it expands; In more technical language, how "flat" the space-time of the universe must be. Pg. 14 One way to get a grip on the most extreme cosmic coincidence of all is by looking again at the variety of chemical elements in our universe, and especially on our planet. (All these thanks to the explosions and recolapse of supernovas which produced 92 elements from 2) Pg. 15 The most energetically stable of all is that of the iron, and if the universe has cooled slowly then most of the protons and neutrons would have been locked in iron nuclei. No room for life. Pg.17 If the universe had been expanding too rapidly, the clouds would have spread thin and pulled apart before gravity could dominate, even on a local scale, and make them collapse into galaxies and stars. Without that collapse, no heavy elements would have been cooked in stellar interiors and, once again, we would not be here to wonder. If the universe had started off expanding too slowly, it would have come to a halt and started to recollapse by the first million years instead of 15 billions. Pg.17 For more similar material is available from Dr. Hugh Ross "Reasons to Believe" Tel. 626 335 5282 www.reasons.org According to Einstein's mathematical description of space and time, it was found that if the Big Bang was stronger or weaker by one part in 10'60 (one part in 60 zeroes) it would have made the universe unsuitable for life as we know it. Pg. 18 Today 15 billion years after the Big Bang, the density of the universe is within a factor of ten (between one tenth and ten times) of the critical value corresponding to a flat universe. And yet, for 15 billion years this density parameter has been steadily moving farther away from the critical value! How close must it have been in the beginning, if it is still only a factor of 10 away? Pg. 25 At the 10'43 of a second of the Big Bang the flatness of the universe must have been precise to within one in 10'60. This makes the flatness parameter the most accurate number in all of physics and suggest a fine tuning of the universe, to set up conditions suitable for the emergence of stars, galaxies, and life of exquisite precision. If this were indeed a coincidence, then it would be a fluke so extraordinary as to make all other cosmic coincidences pale in insignificance. Pg. 26 If the universe were made only of baryons, in the numbers that theory tells us were produced in the Big Bang, and contained nonbaryonic dark stuff at all. then matter would be spread so thin that galaxies (and cluster of galaxies) almost certainly could not have formed in the way we see them around us.Pg. 28 Without supernovae, we would not be here. So the rules of physics, that allow supernovae to exist also allow us to exist; They are part of the pattern of anthropic cosmological coincidences and it is doubly interesting in view of the exquisite precision of those cosmic coincidences that allow just the right nuclear reaction to take place in stars. Pg. 34 Another remarkable coincidence is that particle theorists, trying to develop a complete description of the very small, are forced to postulate EXACTLY the kind of particles that cosmologists contemplating the world of the very large, need to explain the structure of the universe. Pg. 60 If the initial roughness after the Big Bang were substantially less than 10-5, the universe would still today, after more than 10 billion years, be amorphously uniform with no galaxies, no stars, and no life. This shows that the fact that the universe is rough enough, but not too rough, for life to have emerged depends on yet another cosmic coincidence, the value of the roughness. The large scale geography of the universe is once again seen to be intimately connected with our own existence. Pg. 92-93 A combination of coincidences, just right for resonance in
carbon-12, just wrong in oxygen-16, is indeed remarkable. There is no better
evidence to support the argument that the universe has been designed for our
benefit, Another fascinating anthropic coincidence is the fact that the neutrinos had to be precisely fine-tuned in their interaction with baryons. The interaction has to be just right to allow enough neutrinos both to escape from the core and to interact with the shock wave. Pg. 253 Other coincidences cropped up earlier in the life of the universe. It is the strength of the weak force that decide how much the window of opportunity for a universe in which there is some helium, and exploding supernovas is very narrow. These examples are enough to demonstrate the power of the coincidences at work in our universe. Pg. 254-255 We exist only in portions of the universe where the energy levels in carbon and oxygen nuclei happen to be correctly placed. Pg. 271 COSMOLOGY. The search for the Order of the Universe. By Charles J. Caes The order of the universe definitely indicate the presence, past or present, of an intellectually sophisticated Grand Architect of the entire system. It is particularly difficult to conceive of this order and the intelligent existence of at least one planet to have come from non-thinking and inorganic substances. And of course, as the theological argument goes, that Grand Architect, whatever his, her, or its nature or supernature may be, is what we call God. Pg. 70-71 A mere 20% increase of helium throughout the universe would have accelerated the life span of celestial bodies to such an extent that by now the sun would be in its death throes and the earth, therefore, long gone. You and I would never have been born. Pg. 72 In tracing the causes to the beginning of time we can never really find those proofs of the presence of an intellect positioned at the source. But the very managing of the properties we come upon in the natural order, along with the use we see made of these properties, demands that we recognize that behind the great systems of nature there is an intelligence at work. Pg. 155 Wherever there can be found proof of design, it stands to reason that there must be a designer. And no matter where we look in nature, we seem to find ample proof of design. A tree is a lot more complicated a structure than anything a man has devised even in this age of high technology. Pg. 157 There may be second causes, and many courses of second causes, one behind another, between what we observe of nature and the Deity; but there must be intelligence somewhere: there must be in nature more than we see; and amongst the things unseen, there must be an intelligent, designer author. The philosopher beholds with astonishment the production of things around him. Unconscious particles of matter take their stations, and severally arrange themselves in an order so as to become collectively, organised bodies, with part bearing strict and evident relations to one another, and to the utility of the whole: and it should seem that these particles could not move in any other way that they do; for they testify not the smallest choice of liberation, or discretion. There may be particular intelligent beings guiding these motions in each case; or they may be the result of trains of mechanical dispositions, fixed beforehand by an intelligent appointment, and kept in action by a power at the centre. But, in either case, there must be intelligence. Pg. 163 GENESIS AND THE BIG
BANG By Gerald L. Schroeder Several hundred thousand years have passed after the Big Bang. Temperatures and photon energies continued to fall in proportion with the universe's expansion. When temperatures fell below 3000 degrees K, a critical event occurred; light separated from matter and emerged from the darkness of the universe. Genesis 1:2-4. And the Earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep, and God's wind hovered on the face of the waters. And God said: "Let there be light" and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God separated between the light and between the darkness. Pg. 88 Professor Harold Morowitz a physicist at Yale presented computations of the time required for random chemical reactions to form a bacterium not an organism as complex as human, not even a flower, just a simple, single celled bacterium. Basing his calculations on optimistically rapid rates of reaction, the calculated time of bacterium, to form exceeds not only 4.5 billion year age of the earth, but also the entire 15-billion-year age of the universe. The likelihood of random processes producing life from a primordial bath of chemicals is even less likely than that of your shaking an omelet and having the yolk and the white separate back in the original form of the egg. But the impression that chance was the source of life, planted by distinguished personalities such as Wald, remains with the general public even though Scientific American later acknowledged that Wald erred. Pg. 111 DNA and RNA are the basis of the genetic material of all living cells yet analyzed. This equivalence among all life forms is a strong evidence for a single source of all life. It is not plausible that this similarity arose by chance. There are 20 different types of amino acids used in forming proteins. The probability of duplicating by chance two identical protein chains, each with 100 amino acids is one chance in 20-100 which equals the digit 1 followed by 130 zeroes. To reach the probable condition that a single protein might developed by chance, we would need 10-130 trials to have been completed each second since the start of time. To carry out these concurrent trials, the feed stock would require 10-90 grams of carbon. But the entire mass of the earth (all elements combined) is only 6x10-27 grams. In fact the 10-90 exceeds by many billions times the estimated mass of the universe. With these odds, it becomes clear that chance could not have been the driving force that produced similar proteins in bacteria and humans. But there are similar proteins in bacteria and humans. Pg. 113 Stars in their early stages are observed to lose vast amount of matter in one explosive burst. This phenomenon is known as the T-Taury of a star. The Sun probably was no exception. The T-Taury phase of the sun produced a solar wind so fierce that it literally blew all residual interplanetary gases into outer space. Atmospheres of the planets were whisked away as well. Yet here we are breathing a life-supporting mixture of 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen. The source of our oceans and atmosphere are, to large part, the gases and vapors released during volcanic eruptions. Oxygen coming later from photosynthesis. Because the T-Taury of the sun occurred after the agglomeration of the planetary matter but before the major volcanic gassing that accompanied the melting of the young earth the water and other volatile held within the earth were protected from this solar wind. Had the earth meltdown occurred prior to the sun's T-Taury faze, the devastating force of this wind would have swept the water and gases of the biosphere out into space. P. 122-123 Our average distance from the sun is approximately 150 million kilometers. The annual variation in distance from the earth to the Sun is only about 4.5 million kilometers that is only 3% of the total distance. (We are 3% closer in January) If our distance from the sun were only ten million kilometer less or almost 7% the solar heat would prevent water from condensing. There would be no rain nor oceans. The water temperature span is between 0 degrees and 100 degrees Celsius but that is less than 2% of the temperature range in our solar system. Pg. 124 UV radiation is only able to penetrate only a few millimeters of water. This gave life a chance to develop within the ocean prior to the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere. Oxygen produced by aquatic algae formed the initial ozone screen. Life could then emerge from its protected berth in water and populate the land. Pg. 124 The motion of the molten iron mass within the earth's core produces the magnetic field, whose force diverts much of the potentially lethal cosmic radiation that reaches the vicinity of the earth. Were this cosmic radiation not deflected the earth would be bathed with a continuous shower of life-devastating ionization. Pg. 125 The internal heating of the earth produced an amount of volcanic activity that was enough to liberate the water needed for oceans, the gases needed for atmosphere, the molten iron for our magnetic field, while being insufficient to make volcanoes and earth quakes a continual occurrence, as the kind that killed the dinosaurs. Pg. 126 In sharp contrast to the low rate of energy production through food fermentation, the energy released by the use of foods through the respiration process is so great that the consumed food is sufficient to supply the energy requirements of large multi cellular plants and animals. Pg. 133 Photosynthetic growth gets its energy from light rays. It is so efficient that it produces large amounts of organic matter, which provide a renewable source of food for animals and man. With the advent of photosynthesis, life passed two barriers: the continued production of foods was assured, and the oxygen to use this food efficiently was provided. Pg. 133 THE GREAT EVOLUTION MYSTERY By Gordon Rattray Taylor It is very difficult to believe that a complex structure like the eye, which involves many coordinated changes, came about by chance, and especially as it did so several times. Darwin himself was flummoxed by this. When I think of the eye, I shudder he said. Pg.3 Murray Eden, professor of electrical engineering at MIT delivered a paper on "The Inadequacy of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory" Eden stated that if it required a mere six mutations to bring about an adaptive change, this would occur by chance once in a billion years while if two dozen genes were involved, it would require 10 billion years, which is much longer that the age of the earth. Pg. 4 The coordination of parts in a living creature is not achieved by chance but by precisely controlled development. We should not a priori, exclude the possibility that there are programs in evolutionary development too. Pg. 6 An American biologist Niles Eldriges has made a detailed study of trilobite which were successful for some 500 million years and noticed that their form didn't change gradually with time; instead one version would drop out while a slightly different one would start up independently about the same time. He discovered five forms, each built on a distinctive plan, each of which remained stable while it lasted. Pg. 6 The American biologist T.H. Frazzetta. Bone has precise,
indeed a unique, structure, being composed of mineral and living matter
interspersed. The strength of bones comes from the mineral component: crystals
of hydroxypatite; the adaptability from the living collagen. The two are
arranged in specific patterns, with spaces reserved for living bone-making
cells and for blood vessels. If one of the larger bones are cut in half, it is
seen to contain a spongework of crisscrossing sheets, the trabeculae, which
align themselves in precisely the best way to absorb the stresses to which that
particular bone, in that individual, is being subjected. Like the network of
girders which support a bridge or In the transition from amphibians to land animals they would need to protect their eyes from drying by a flow of tears and need eyelids to protect them from dust particles. Similarly the nose must be protected by a supply of mucus. Also it no longer needs the curious organ which runs along its side called the lateral line, and this is converted by an amazing series of steps. The eye and the ear are extraordinarily complex beyond imagination. Then there are the changes from fins to legs. Pg. 60 The egg is a miracle, its smooth, rigid enough to protect its cargo but while not being so hard that the chick will be unable to peck its way out. The shell is pervious to gasses, so that the chick can breathe. Suspended in the middle of the egg is the yolk, supported by threads. You can rotate the shell of the egg twenty times without disturbing the yolk. the threads just wind up. Pg. 63 The egg became quite different from the egg of the fishes. from the shell, constructed of crystals of hydroxypatite and waxed over, to the altered chemistry, based on fat rather than protein, the amniotic egg was in a different class altogether, a stunning advance on the blob of jelly that constituted the eggs of frogs and fishes, a saltation if ever there was one. Pg. 64 What an extraordinary thing is a feather. So light and yet so strong. Under the microscope it is seen to be more remarkable. The vane is divided into innumerable hollow "barbs" each fringed with "barbules". Under higher magnification, each barbule is found to be equipped with hooks. These catch in the barbules forward of them, so that the whole structure is linked into a single vane, resistant to the air. Actually, feathers come in two models. The downy feathers which are designed to conserve heat (Designed? perish the thought: let us say 'which by pure chance serve to conserve heat) lack the hooks. Feathers are supposed by paleontologists to have evolved from the scales of reptile. This, as Barbara Stahl remarks, would have required an immense period of time and involved a series of intermediary structures. So far the fossil record does not bear out that supposition'. Pg. 67-68 The astonishing point here is that the feathers seems to have evolved BEFORE flight and thus before they offered an advantage upon which natural selection could act. However, this is not a unique instance of such anticipation. Pg. 70
It strains the imagination to visualize so many beautifully apt changes occurring by chance, even when one consider that 150 million years had elapsed from the emergence of life from the sea and the appearance of the first birds. For my part I can imagine that each change might have occurred by chance during that time; what I find hard to swallow is the accumulation of different changes integrated into a single functional pattern. Of these changes the most radical and most baffling is probably thermo-regulation, the ability to maintain a high temperature. P. 71 Thermo-regulation appears full fledged, on the evolutionary scene with as little warning as the devil in pantomime. Pg. 71 Looking back over the evidence, we see that in each major steps there are an almost complete absence of fossils capable of supporting the claim that the new forms arose by a gradual accumulations of minute changes. Eggs are found fully developed; so are the feathers. Fossils of the early birds are extremely rare. Placental mammals appear simultaneously in twelve groups. Some authorities would put the figure higher; actually there are some twenty six groups of mammals the origins of which are completely obscure. As for the fishes, 'we do not know the direct ancestor of the fish' says Professor Lehman. The origin of insects is a complete mystery. The position of the flowering plants is no better. Professor G.G. Simpson is an ardent Darwinist, but he goes so far as to say: 'the absence of transitional forms is an almost universal phenomenon'. This is true of invertebrates as well as vertebrates and also of plants. He adds; 'The line making connection with common ancestry is not known even in one instance. 'The rodents, he notes, appear suddenly, already equipped with gnawing teeth. As to the mammals, 'in all 32 orders of mammals, the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed. Even the more recent evolutionary changes are baffling. For instance, the whales, and the dolphins appear in the fossil record formed and diversified. Pg. 78 Even By what conceivable chance could the trilobite have accumulated the one material in the universe -namely calcite- which had the required optical properties and the imposed on it the one type of curved surface which would achieve the required result? There are innumerable possible shapes, none of which offer the unique advantage of spherical correction, except the one I have described. Now if anything were where needed to cap this evolutionary feat, it is the fact that the refractive index of calcite and chitin are precisely those needed to produce an apanatic lens. Pg. 98 Raptorial birds like the falcon and eagle, as you well know, have acute vision, as much as eight times the resolving power of human vision. This is achieved primarily by an intense concentration of receptors, as many as a million per square millimeter, and of course these receptors are mainly cones. Pg. 101 As the brain forms, two bulges appear, become cup like and
form the retina. They secrete a substance, termed an inducers, which causes the
skin above to develop into a lens. If an eye cup is transplanted to other part
of the body, it causes a lens to form there. This accounts for the way in which
brain tissue and skin cooperate. But how in The eminent morphologist J.W. Torrey says, the evolutionary origin of the inner ear is entirely unknown : In contrast with the eye, where undifferentiated cells were specialized into required forms, here existing structures have been profoundly modified and even shifted to another position in a progressive series of changes which certainly look more like the refinement of a plan than the result of a series of happy coincidences. Pg. 105 It is a remarkable molecule indeed which at one moment has an affinity for oxygen and a few seconds later loses that affinity; that it simultaneously changes its preferences with respect to carbon dioxide makes it even more remarkable. There could be no more amazing example of adaptation to a task. Blood carries fifty times more oxygen than sea water. Pg. 108 Professor Grasse remarks. It is hard to see how natural selection could have presided unaided over such delicate fittings as the double lock of the ant-lion mouth, the hinges of the bees wings, the push button of Nepas, which have to be perfect if they are to function at all. Many of these modifications possesses an all or nothing character which make it very difficult to understand how natural selection could have produced them. Pg. 113-114 Over the years a number of biologists have found it impossible to believe that the marvelously precise adaptations to be found throughout the world of plants and animals could be due solely to chance and have come, often reluctantly, to the conclusion that there exists some kind of a plan or purposiveness in evolution. Pg. 115 Fish are mostly dark above and light below which helps to conceal them from any predator above or below them, in itself a neat adaptation. Seen from the side, their silvery appearance effectively conceals them in water which is full of light refracted by ripples on the surface. This is due to their ability to secrete many millions of tiny nitrogenous crystals in layers on their skin and scales. There is a million of these minute mirrors to the square centimeter. By themselves, they reflect about 24% of the incident light, but a much higher figure about 75% can be attained if they are arranged in layers, alternately with cytoplasm, provided that the layers are separated by exactly one quarter of the wave length of the incident light. For green light this means a seven-millionth of a centimeter, and this is precisely what evolution has arranged. How can natural selection achieve such a uniquely precise solution? Pg. 155 Then and now genetics was unable to answer the main question; can chance account for the appearance of a wanted or useful mutation at the right moment, and do it again and again? This was only to be expected. But it was also unable to demonstrate a mechanism by which, for instance, the woodpecker could acquire a reverse claw. Much less could it explain the processes by which an intricate organ like the ear was formed. The position is no more encouraging today. Indeed the discoveries of the 'sixties and seventies' have made it difficult to account for even the simplest modifications. The genome has turned out to be so intricate, so much is going on within it which has never been suspected, that if we succeed in grasping the principle at work, genetics will be lifted on a new plane and all may become clear. Pg. 166 It was a bombshell when Oswal Avery and his colleagues at the Rockefeller Institute demonstrated in 1944 that it was DNA which carried the genetic message. By transferring the DNA from a rough-coated bacterium to a smooth-coated one, he caused the later to produce rough-coated offspring, and the character bred true thereafter. It was an epoch-making experiment and why Avery did not receive a Nobel award for it is one of life's great mysteries. Pg. 166 (So was Gandhi and A. Maslow the president of "The American Psychologists Association, Carl Gustav Jung), ETC. To bring about such simple change as the green colour in an insect's eye demands many genes. (Eye colour in drosophila depends on thirteen genes). How many more are needed for the thirty or more reactions which are involved in making blood? It is rather as if a composer should decide to rewrite the woodwind in a symphonic composition. He must not only orchestrate the entry of the various woodwind instruments in relation to one another; he must also pay heed to what the orchestra is doing at the same period in time. Today the problem is at least recognized. The neo-Darwinians did not even perceive its existence. That these sequences of coordinated reactions, and there are literally thousands of them in the human body, should all have arisen by chance mutation of single genes is in the highest degree unlikely. It is as if we expected the famous monkeys who inadvertently typed out the plays of Shakespeare, to produce the works of Dante, Racine, Confucius, Tom Wolfe, the Baghavad Gita and the latest copy of the Punch in rapid succession. As Professor Grasse has said with a change of metaphor, The probability of dust carried by the wind reproducing Durer's Melancholia is less infinitesimal than the possibility of copy errors in the DNA molecule leading to the formation of the eye. Pg. 183-184 That the DNA or RNA came by chance is in the highest degree improbable. The late H. Quasler, a prominent biochemist, calculated the odds against it 10-301, or virtually impossible. Another biologist a similar calculation for the whole universe, on the assumption that there were 10-20 planets on which life may appear. He came up with even a more extraordinary figure of 10-415 raising to 10-600 ( 600 zeroes to one) if a longer DNA was required. In short the mechanism falls short of plausibility by hundreds of orders of magnitude. Pg. 202 The earth is flooded with a vast spectrum of vibrations,
mostly emanating from the sun, from mile long radio waves down to gamma rays
10.000 billions times shorter. In this spectrum there is only a narrow
"window" of vibrations which is visible to man and which we call
light-those lying between 380 and 1100 millimicrons in length. Atmospheric
absorption mop up almost all the reminder. Now, by happy chance (if It is very hard to swallow the idea that chance or rather a long series of chances-built up such an extremely elaborate mechanism which depends on substances far more complex than the raw materials which it transforms. Unless there was some inner necessity, some built-in primordial disposition to consolidate in such a pattern, it is past belief that anything so intricate and idiosyncratic should appear. Pg. 207 A million years after the origin of life, by whatever means, a second major discontinuity occurs the appearance of a much larger and sophisticated type of cell than the simple type of bag of replicating molecules which I have so far described. And this refinement too, involved rapid readjustments of a kind which seem beyond the scope of chance. Pg. 210 In the development of sexual reproduction, the contrast between prokaryote and eukaryote has been called 'the greatest evolutionary discontinuity to be found in present-day world. How this advance was achieved remains one of the major mysteries of biology? Pg. 211
THE MIND OF GOD By
Paul Davies The astronomer James Jeans once proclaimed that God is a mathematician. His phrase express in metaphorical terms an article of faith adopted by almost all scientists today. Pg. 140 (I don't see them at church) Penrose, referring to the astonishing success of theories such as the general theory of relativity, writes: it is hard for me to believe, as some had tried to maintain, that such SUPERB theories could have arisen merely by some random natural selection of ideas leaving only the good ones as survivors. The good ones are simply too good to be survivors of ideas that have arisen in that random way. There must, instead, be some deep underlying reason for the accord between mathematics and physics, i.e. between Plato's world and the physical world. Pg. 152 The astonishing insight of mathematicians such as Gauss and Riemann is attested not only by their remarkable mathematical feats, but also by their ability to write down theorems without proofs, leaving later generations of mathematicians to struggle over the demonstrations. How these mathematicians were able to come with their results "ready-made" when the proofs turned out to involve volumes of complex mathematical reasoning, is a major puzzle. Pg. 153 A detailed study revealed other "coincidences" without which carbon would not be produced and preserved inside stars. Hole was so impressed with these "monstrous series of accidents" he was prompted to comment that it was as if "the laws of physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside stars". Later he was to expound that the universe looks like a "put-up job", as though somebody had been "monkeying" with the laws of physics. Pg. 199 William Paley in the eighteenth century said, even if you have never seen a watch, you would still be led to believe that this was a contrivance designed for a purpose. When we consider the much more elaborate contrivances of nature, we should reach the same conclusion even more forcefully. Pg. 201 The natural world is not just any old concoction of entities and forces, but a marvelously ingenious and unified mathematical scheme. Now words like "ingenious" and "clever" are undeniably a human quality, yet one cannot help attributing them to nature too. We have come a long way from Paley's watch. To return to my favorite analogy once more, the world of particles physics is more like a crossword than a clockwork mechanism. Each discovery is a clue, which finds its solution in some new mathematical linkage. As the discoveries mount up, so more and more cross-links are "filled-in", and one begins to see a pattern emerge. At present there remain many blanks on the crossword, but something of its subtlety and consistency can be glimpsed. Unlike mechanisms which can evolve to more complex and organized forms over time, the "crossword" of particles comes ready-made. The links do not evolve, they are simply there, in the underlying laws. We must either accept them as truly and amazing brute facts, or seek a deeper explanation. According to Christian tradition, this deeper explanation is that God has designed nature with a considerable ingenuity and skill, and that the enterprise of particle physics is uncovering part of this design? In seeking to answer this question, we need to take into account the many "coincidences" mentioned earlier in connection with the anthropic principle and the requirements of biological organisms. The apparent "fine-tuning" of the laws of nature necessary if conscious life is to evolve in the universe then carries the clear implication that God has designed the universe so as to permit such life and consciousness to emerge. It would mean that our own existence in the universe formed a central part in God's plan. Pg. 213 ARE WE ALONE? By Paul Davies The high degree of improbability of the formation of life by accidental molecular shuffling has been compared by Fred Hoyle to a whirlwind passing through a aircraft factory and blowing scattered components into a functioning 747. It is easy to estimate the odds against random permutation of molecules assembling DNA. It is about 10 - 40.000 zeroes to one against. That is the same as tossing a coin and achieving heads roughly 130.000 in a row. Pg. 28
The stability of the di-proton depends on a competition of forces. On the one hand there is the powerful nuclear force of attraction that wants to bind the protons together. On the other hand is the electric force of repulsion arising because the protons carry like electric charges. The outcome of this tug-of-war is very finely balanced. The electric force wins. But if the nuclear force were just a few percentages stronger, it would have won, and the universe would probably have gone unobserved. It is a sobering thought how delicately our existence is weighed in nature's balance of forces. Pg. 120 We have found, to our surprise layer upon layer of order lying hidden beneath. Consider the example of particles physics. Most subatomic particles, are produced, and exist only fleetingly, when other particles collides, these ephemeral entities nevertheless fit into patterns and laws and mathematical arrangements that scientists hadn't come across before and certainly not from a casual inspection of the world.. So there is a hidden order: there are underlying laws. This is what the late Heinz Pagels called the "cosmic code", depicting scientists as code-breakers, sifting the complicated the raw data of experiment and observation to try to discern the hidden message Pg. 123
FRONTIERS By Isaac Asimov Every arrangement of amino acids produce a surface with its own characteristic shape, and the number of possible arrangements is inconceivable. If you begin with only one amino acid of the twenty amino acids, you could line them up in more than 2.4 billion billion arrangements, each producing a molecule of slightly different shape. Actual protein molecules, however, consist of far more than twenty amino acids. The number of each type that is present varies from a few to dozens. The number of possible arrangements of the amino acids in a hemoglobin molecule (which carries oxygen from the lungs to all the cells of the body) is 10 to the 640 power. This is 10 followed by 640 zeros! And only one of these arrangements will work perfectly. (All by chance). Pg. 97 In the human being, there are perhaps 50.000 enzymes controlling 50.000 chemical reactions. The nucleic acid molecules that contain this information that leads to the formation of these enzymes are made up of 6 billion nucleotides. If these nucleotides are represented by letters "in the correct order", this would represent a billion words, or roughly, the equivalent of 360 books, each the size of a volume of Encyclopedia Britannica. That's a lot of information, but, then, a complete knowledge of the human body requires a lot of information. Pg. 106
Supernovas produce vast quantities of cosmic rays and earth is constantly sprayed with cosmic rays that originated in various supernovas here and there in the sky. These cosmic rays produce mutations and accelerate the process of evolution. Without them we would all still be one celled creatures-if that. Pg. 307
THE CREATOR AND THE COSMOS By Hugh Ross To study the origins and development of the universe, is in a sense to investigate the basis for any meaning and purpose in life. Cosmology has deep theological and philosophical ramifications. Pg. 10 Lacking a solution to the paradox of God's predestination and human being's free choice, Einstein like many other powerful intellects through the centuries, ruled out the existence of a personal God. Nevertheless, and to his credit Einstein held unswervingly, against peer pressure, to belief in a Creator. Pg. 55 The universe must be fine tuned to get enough nucleons, but also a precise number of electrons must exist. Unless the number of electrons is equivalent to the number of protons to an accuracy of one part in 10-37 or better, electromagnetic forces in the universe would have so overcome the gravitational forces that galaxies, stars and planets never would have formed. One part in 10-37 is such an incredible balance that it is hard to visualize. Pg. 115 It is amazing how accurate the expansion rate of the universe must be for life to exist. It cannot differ by more than one part in 10-55 from the actual rate. Pg. 116 The high level of entropy is essential for life. Without it systems as small as stars and planets would never form. But as extremely high as the entropy of the universe is, it could not be much higher. If it were higher, systems as large as galaxies would never form. Stars and planets cannot form without galaxies. Pg. 117 If the electromagnetic force relative to gravity were increased by just one part in 10-40, only small stars would form. And, if it were decreased by just one part in 10-40, only large stars would form. But for life to be possible in the universe, both large and small stars must exist. The large stars must exist because only in their thermonuclear furnaces are most of life essentials produced. The small stars like the sun must exist because only small stars burn long enough to sustain a planet with life. Pg. 117 Pages 119 to 121 have 26 abbreviations of precise exactitudes and "coincidences" without which life could not have formed. A pleasure to read and unforgettable proof. A star more massive than the sun will burn too quickly and erratically for life on the planet to be sustained. But the star cannot be any less massive either. The smaller the mass of the star, the closer the planet must be to that star to maintain a temperature suitable for life chemistry. This causes a problem because the tidal interaction between a star and its planet increases dramatically as the distance separating them shrinks. Bringing the planet just the slightest bit closer causes such a tremendous tidal interaction, that the planet rotation period quickly lengthens from hours to months. This is the fate for example of both Mercury and Venus. Pg. 134
The sun's luminosity has increased by 35% since life was first introduced on earth. Such a change is more than enough to exterminate life. But life survived on earth because the increase in solar luminosity was exactly canceled out each step of the way by a decrease in the efficiency of the greenhouse effect in earth's atmosphere. This decrease in the greenhouse efficiency arose to the careful introduction of the just right species of life in just the right quantities at just the right times. The slightest "evolutionary accident" would have caused either a runaway freeze-up or a runaway boiling. Pg. 135 The rotation time of a life-supporting planet cannot be changed by more than a few percent. If the planet takes too long to rotate, temperatures between day and night would be too great. On the other hand if the planet rotates too rapidly, wind velocities will raise to catastrophic levels. A quiet day in Jupiter (rotation period of 10 hours for example, generates thousands of miles per hour winds. Pg. 136 Jupiter is two and a half times more massive than all the planets combined. Because of its huge mass, thus huge gravity, and its location between the earth and the clouds of comets surrounding the solar system Jupiter either draws comets (by gravity) to collide with itself, as it did in July 94, or more commonly it deflect comets (again by gravity) out of the solar system. In Wetterhill's words, if it were not for Jupiter, "we wouldn't be around to study the origin of the solar system. Pg. 137 On pages 139 to 141 again there are 36 abbreviations of precise exactitudes and "coincidences without which life on earth could not have existed.
FINGERPRINTS ON THE UNIVERSE By Louis Pollack Note. This book is unusual because it is written mainly for
the Jewish reader and is endorsed by no less than 20 rabbis and 5 professors.
In Christianity only the Adventists have written about the anthropic principle,
the rest of Christianity, other religions the educational systems and the media
as far as I know keep total silence. Only part of "There is still considerable difference as to the means, such as how far natural selection has acted.or whether there exists some mysterious innate tendency to perfectibility." Charles Darwin 1878, some twenty years after publication of his Origin of the Species. Pg. 34 In the "Origin of the Species", The problem with Darwinism, many Judaic authorities make clear, that it does not even begin to clarify what Force accounted for the appearance of the so-called "primeval soup" and its bubbling in the first place. Evolutionary theory may attempt to explain "how" the processes of life evolve and change, but it does not even address the fundamental question of why they evolve and change. And nowhere do Darwinists account for the mysterious Force within an evolutionary chain which ignites the development of the human being into someone able to reason, imagine and be possessed of an inner soul. Pg. 40 Man.... cannot achieve meaning in his life without regaining his religious outlook. Carl Gustav Jung Pg. 44 Modern physics has introduced us to what Sir John Eccles, who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize for psychology and medicine has called a "new cosmic world-view" [in which] "....mind and mental powers events have a status matching that of the material world. Will it be found someday that the theories of quantum mechanics can apply outside the sphere of atoms and subatoms, perhaps to help in the investigations of mysteries which exist in the "twilight zone" between the micro and macro worlds? for example, can quantum assist in the search for how out thought processes develop and how the brain functions? And if it is ever established "beyond scientific doubt" that a particle materializes (is "created?") only after it is chosen for measurement or observation, will this establish as well that man (the "chooser," the "observer") is also a co-creator, with God? Pg. 71-72 In two succinct sentences, Max Planck described this modern development of scientific thinking: "The essential point is that the world of sensation is not the only world which may conceivably exist but that there is still another world. To be sure this other world is not directly accessible to us, but its existence is indicated time and time again, with compelling clarity, not only by practical life but also by the labours of science." Pg. 79-80 In Heisenberg's own writings, we can find a clear
explanation for the unexpected philosophic implications of his work. In
"Physics and Philosophy," he traced the history of science, pointing
out that reliance during the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries on the Theory of Determinism, on mathematics and on the five senses
had saddled physics with a confinement and a "naivete" that gave it a
limited view of the universe. For, he continued, this view which concentrated
on matter and the physical did not "touch reality as do the age-old
religious concepts of soul and God and mind," which have an immediate
relation to reality ." (Interestingly, he commented in this discussion
that the Jewish concept of God offers a "higher stage of abstraction"
than that found in the various "natural gods" of the physical world.)
These values of traditional tradition, he went on, must be recognized because
technology had slipped out of man's control and because such values, rather
than theories, are the tools with which man must work if he is to truly touch
reality. It was at this In the centennial year of Roger Pentrose, professor of mathematics at Oxford, evaluating the issue of what state the universe was at its creation, has computed that the odds against the universe appearing by accident is in the range of one possibility out of the number one followed by eighty-seven zeros. P. 88 Professor Jastrow, a self-styled "agnostic" in religious matters closes his "God and the Astronomers" with a parable that conveys the discomforting impact upon the scientist of new findings and thinking in science. The parable which I have taken the liberty of revising somewhat, follows: Scientists, the men of reason, labour at their blackboards and in sophisticated laboratories to advance the frontiers of their profession. Pursuing understanding, they grope their way up the sheer granite mountain of investigation, inch by inch. Finally as their fingers are able to grasp the ledge of the summit and their eyes are able to peer over it, they are astonished to see a group of theologians already comfortably settled on the mountaintop. Pg. 97 "Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origins of the world" Dr. Robert Jastrow in God and the Astronomers QUOTES What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world. A. Einstein I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details. A. Einstein Modern physicists who prefer to solve their problems without recourse to God (although this becomes more and more difficult all the time) emphasizes that nature mysteriously operates on mathematical principles. It is the mathematical orthodoxy of the universe that enables theorists like Einstein to predict and discover natural laws simply by the solution of equations. The Universe and Dr.
Einstein By The death signifies nothing, for us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one. A. Einstein What we call time is but "the moving unreal reflection of eternity. Plato The person in the peak experience may feel a day passing as if it were minutes or also a minute so intensely lived that it may feel like a day or a year or an eternity even. He/she may also lose his/her consciousness of being located in a particular place. A. Maslow President of American Psychologists Association. What happens after death is so unspeakable glorious that our imagination and our feelings do not suffice to form even an appropriate conception of it. Carl Gustav Jung (After he had an out of body experience) (Note: In the pre Christian era in On December 17, 1273 St. Thomas Aquinas experienced a vision
that caused him to utter these words: "Such things have been revealed to
me that all that I have written seems to me so much straw." He never spoke
or wrote another word, and died three months later, on March 7, 1274 on the way
to These people will listen and listen but not understand: they will look and look, but not see. Matthew 13:14 The undevout astronomer is mad. Sir William Herschel In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of God. Charles Darwin Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never relaxing crusade against skepticism, and against dogmatism, against disbelief, and against superstition, and the rallying cry in this crusade has always been and always will be, "On to God". Max Planck It is because both science and religion have been too narrowly conceived, and have been too exclusively dichotomized and separated from each other, that they have been seen to be two mutually exclusive worlds. To put it briefly, this separation permitted nineteenth century science to become too exclusively mechanistic, positivistic, too reductionistic, too desperately attempting to be value free. Abraham Maslow One could say that the nineteenth century atheist has burned down the house instead of remodeling it. Abraham Maslow Perhaps because he is so innocently unaware of his smallness, of the feebleness of his knowledge, of the smallness of his playpen, or the smallness of his portion of the cosmos and because he takes his narrow limits so for granted that he reminds me of the little boy who was seen standing uncertainly at a street corner with a bundle under his arm. A concerned bypasser asked him where he was going and he replied that he was going away from home. Why was he waiting at the corner? He was not allowed to cross the street. Abraham Maslow Herein lies the weakness of the positivist and the professional atheists who feel smug in the conviction that they have been successful in divesting the world not only of the gods but also of miracles. The beauty of it is that we have to contend ourselves with the recognition of the "miracle" beyond which there is no way out. A. Einstein The decisive question for man is: is he related to something infinite or not? That is the question of his life. Only if we know that, the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interests upon futilities, and up on all kinds of gods which are not of real importance? C.G. Jung The majority of my patients consisted not of believers but of those who lost their faith. The ones who came to me were the lost sheep. Even in this day and age the believer has the opportunity, in his church, to live a "symbolic life". C.G. Jung This anthology of the Anthropic Principle is meant to be just a small sample of the ocean of extraordinary exactitudes and coincidences beyond our humble understanding. Also it is incomplete without wandering into the unseen universe and to collect cases in the supernatural field that are scientifically fully proven and beyond dispute. There are so many cases, some perhaps in your family or among friends. In the final analysis the sciences and religion are one, they all tell us about God. According to almost all fossil records, animals appeared and
disappeared without transitional evolution, fact that even Reader, remember Aristotle said: "Contemplative happiness... is the form of life in which human beings come most nearly to being divine." In closing, faith in God is the difference whether we act as there is no tomorrow, or we act as though life is just a test for eternity. "Life is just a test" - Winston Churchill http://www.archimedesfoundation.org/anthology.html |
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