Pope: Science cannot fully understand the mystery of man

[buffalo]

I have no doubt that intelligent life has evolved on some small fraction of the terrestrial-like planets around 10\22 stars in the universe, or that some intelligent species have evolved religious consciousness. However, there are no Catholic dioceses that we know of on any of the exoplanets that have so far been discovered.

What faith you have! When one looks at the odds of life move into the design realm from the chance mode it makes it surely difficult.

Of course I have seen some Dioceses’ here on earth look like they are from outer space.

 

[buffalo]

Mathematically, the odds are in favor. Still, I don’t see this as a threat to religion.

Nohome

Some have estimated the odds of all the anthropic coincidences at 10 to the 800th. What do you believe the odds are?

 

[drpmjhess]

Some have estimated the odds of all the anthropic coincidences at 10 to the 800th. What do you believe the odds are?

Buffalo, I’m neither an odds maker nor a cosmologist. Joel Primack (UC Santa Cruz) thinks Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee are unduly pessimistic in Rare Earth about the incidence of life.

Regarding anthropic coincidences, we don’t have to doubt the existence of the ones based in physics, because we our selves are here, so they must be true (Pauli exclusion principle, nucleosynthesis of heavy elements in stars, etc). The question is how many non-gaseous, rocky, water-bearing planets exist within the habitable zone around their respective stars, stars that are stable enough to have permitted billions of years of evolution. I don’t know the answer, but I suspect that out of 100 billion galaxies averaging 100 billion stars each, the chance of life arising on exo-planets is not miniscule.

If intelligent life arises, religion and morality seem as natural impulses to evolve as aesthetic responses to beauty. If God is triune everywhere, and reveals Godself through this evolved religious sensibility to each instance of intelligent, morally responsive life, I have no doubt that “catholic” religion exists in many places, even though Roman Catholicism is confined (for now) to Earth. I also do not doubt there would be exo-Protestantism, exo-Islam, exo-Buddhism, exo-Jehovah’s Witnessism, etc. Are there exo-Democrats and exo-Republicans? Could there be an exo- George Bush?

Petrus

 

[Nohome]

I don’t know the answer, but I suspect that out of 100 billion galaxies averaging 100 billion stars each, the chance of life arising on exo-planets is not miniscule.

At some point, the number becomes so large, that it becomes more convenient to consider the improbability that Earth is the only living planet.

Nohome

 

[Doyle_Mashern]

If intelligent life arises, religion and morality seem as natural impulses to evolve as aesthetic responses to beauty. If God is triune everywhere, and reveals Godself through this evolved religious sensibility to each instance of intelligent, morally responsive life, I have no doubt that “catholic” religion exists in many places, even though Roman Catholicism is confined (for now) to Earth. I also do not doubt there would be exo-Protestantism, exo-Islam, exo-Buddhism, exo-Jehovah’s Witnessism, etc. Are there exo-Democrats and exo-Republicans? Could there be an exo- George Bush?

Very well stated.

 

[drpmjhess]

Very well stated.

Thank you, Doyle.
Petrus

 

[Nohome]

Very well stated.

Ditto, I could live with all of that.

Nohome

 

[drpmjhess]

Man occupies the center of a few more things. He is in the center of the biggest disrtances and the smallest. He is the center of Creation. Should I go on?

Buffalo, I wanted to comment on this other interesting point you made, about humanity being at the central point between large and small.

At the evolution conference at which I spoke in Hawaii (3-9 January), cosmologist Joel Primack and his wife Nancy Abrams gave an astonishing talk (available on CD-ROM at viewfromthecenter.com/) called “The View from the Center of the Universe.” They discuss the very point you mentioned, which some see as one of the more remarkable of the anthropic coincidences – namely, that the human person occupies a point importantly situated between the infinitesimal and the incomprehensibly large, between quarks and superclusters of galaxies.

While rejecting an anti-scientific Intelligent Design position, I think it is possible – indeed, for a theist necessary – to note the possibilities and necessities built into the universe from the start (Jack Haught writes of this as “theology of promise”). A biological entity with a brain capacity much smaller than ours (say, a mouse) would not have sufficient neurons to permit complex reasoning or self-conscious, or reflexive thought that could give rise to moral and religious consciousness. A being far larger that us – say the size of a planet, or a molecular cloud – would have a “brain” too large to permit instantaneous transmission of electrical impulses, so it is hard to imagine how it could be “conscious” in the sense that we understand that word.

If I go on longer I’ll soon be well out of my scientific depth, but in any case I, find the Primack discussion lucid and a valuable starting point for doing “exo-theology.” It may well be that wherever and however conscious, rational, and religiously responsive life evolves in the universe, it is constrained to follow certain parameters. It’s body cannot be too large or too small, and it cannot evolve on planets with too much or too little gravitational attraction. It may even be that for brains to think spiritually the body’s physiology has to be endothermic, ruling out a reptilian or amphibian platform. It may be that altruism, compassion, and spiritual vision had to await the evolution of the higher mammalian brain. I’ll leave these matters for Hecd and other biologists and neuroscientists to discuss.

Petrus

 

[buffalo]

Buffalo, I wanted to comment on this other interesting point you made, about humanity being at the central point between large and small.

At the evolution conference at which I spoke in Hawaii (3-9 January), cosmologist Joel Primack and his wife Nancy Abrams gave an astonishing talk (available on CD-ROM at viewfromthecenter.com/) called “The View from the Center of the Universe.” They discuss the very point you mentioned, which some see as one of the more remarkable of the anthropic coincidences – namely, that the human person occupies a point importantly situated between the infinitesimal and the incomprehensibly large, between quarks and superclusters of galaxies.

While rejecting an anti-scientific Intelligent Design position, I think it is possible – indeed, for a theist necessary – to note the possibilities and necessities built into the universe from the start (Jack Haught writes of this as “theology of promise”). A biological entity with a brain capacity much smaller than ours (say, a mouse) would not have sufficient neurons to permit complex reasoning or self-conscious, or reflexive thought that could give rise to moral and religious consciousness. A being far larger that us – say the size of a planet, or a molecular cloud – would have a “brain” too large to permit instantaneous transmission of electrical impulses, so it is hard to imagine how it could be “conscious” in the sense that we understand that word.

If I go on longer I’ll soon be well out of my scientific depth, but in any case I, find the Primack discussion lucid and a valuable starting point for doing “exo-theology.” It may well be that wherever and however conscious, rational, and religiously responsive life evolves in the universe, it is constrained to follow certain parameters. It’s body cannot be too large or too small, and it cannot evolve on planets with too much or too little gravitational attraction. It may even be that for brains to think spiritually the body’s physiology has to be endothermic, ruling out a reptilian or amphibian platform. It may be that altruism, compassion, and spiritual vision had to await the evolution of the higher mammalian brain. I’ll leave these matters for Hecd and other biologists and neuroscientists to discuss.

Petrus

It is fascinating!

One could also reason that God created the universe around man, thus making the universe correspond to the needs of man.

 

[drpmjhess]

It is fascinating!

One could also reason that God created the universe around man, thus making the universe correspond to the needs of man.

Quite true, for our part of the universe. However, distances are so vast – and to our knowledge so humanly intraversible – it seems more likely that God so loved the world that he constituted it to correspond to the needs of multiple rational species, most of which we will only learn about eschatologically.

An interesting question for both theologians and exobiologists is whether just any platform – e.g., body plan and physiology – will do, or whether a mammalian-like platform is necessary. Perhaps it is endoskeletal chauvinism that leads sci-fi screen writers to make the “good guys” usually anthropoid, while exoskeletal creatures are almost invariably the “bad guys” (as in Galaxy Quest). Could a lobster-like creature or a marine “mammal” ever evolve rationality, moral consciousness, altruism and spirtuality? Is our upright, bipedal posture, leaving the hands free (furnished with opposable thumbs) to interact with the brain, indispensable to the evolution of social interaction, speech, and cognition which give rise to these characteristically “human” qualities?

Petrus

 

[Nohome]

Quite true, for our part of the universe. However, distances are so vast – and to our knowledge so humanly intraversible – it seems more likely that God so loved the world that he constituted it to correspond to the needs of multiple rational species, most of which we will only learn about eschatologically.

An interesting question for both theologians and exobiologists is whether just any platform – e.g., body plan and physiology – will do, or whether a mammalian-like platform is necessary. Perhaps it is endoskeletal chauvinism that leads sci-fi screen writers to make the “good guys” usually anthropoid, while exoskeletal creatures are almost invariably the “bad guys” (as in Galaxy Quest). Could a lobster-like creature or a marine “mammal” ever evolve rationality, moral consciousness, altruism and spirtuality? Is our upright, bipedal posture, leaving the hands free (furnished with opposable thumbs) to interact with the brain, indispensable to the evolution of social interaction, speech, and cognition which give rise to these characteristically “human” qualities?

Petrus

Considering the many cases of convergent evolution on our own planet (penguin/puffin, ostrich/emu) I would think it is quite possible that other intelligent life would be similar to humans.

The Church teaches that humans were created in the image of God. If this is true on Earth, why not in the rest of his creation?

Nohome

 

[buffalo]

Quite true, for our part of the universe. However, distances are so vast – and to our knowledge so humanly intraversible – it seems more likely that God so loved the world that he constituted it to correspond to the needs of multiple rational species, most of which we will only learn about eschatologically.

An interesting question for both theologians and exobiologists is whether just any platform – e.g., body plan and physiology – will do, or whether a mammalian-like platform is necessary. Perhaps it is endoskeletal chauvinism that leads sci-fi screen writers to make the “good guys” usually anthropoid, while exoskeletal creatures are almost invariably the “bad guys” (as in Galaxy Quest). Could a lobster-like creature or a marine “mammal” ever evolve rationality, moral consciousness, altruism and spirtuality? Is our upright, bipedal posture, leaving the hands free (furnished with opposable thumbs) to interact with the brain, indispensable to the evolution of social interaction, speech, and cognition which give rise to these characteristically “human” qualities?

Petrus

As we are taught man is the culmination of His creation, designed (if you will) in His image and likeness. Since the end game (man) was known to God at the outset, man cannot be the result of randomness. Or else, God would have thought - let me see what happens when I stir up this pot of stuff - voila - man - in my image and likeness - wow- am I good or what? or really lucky?

Imagine a drop of water falling from the sky. When it hits the ground it scatters in all directions. Perhaps the universe followed this pattern with man being the center. I submit the universe supports the body plan.

 

[drpmjhess]

As we are taught man is the culmination of His creation, designed (if you will) in His image and likeness. … I submit the universe supports the body plan.

Buffalo I don’t regard the imago Dei as residing in our physical shape so much as in our experienced rationality, free will, and moral responsiveness.

I do agree that the anthropoid body plan could be “built into” the universe, in the sense that it is a very efficient plan for supporting rational and moral behavior. Fish evolved with the most hydordynamically efficient body shape, and birds evolved with hollow bones. It makes sense that humans – and anthropoid creatures elsewhere in the universe – would evolve an upright posture allowing hand-brain coordination.

Perhaps having only four limbs and ten fingers are not necessary attributes of the anthropoid body plan. If six-limbedness or polydactyly evolved in a chordate on some planet, having four non-leg limbs or twelve fingers available might confer a survival advantage.

Petrus

 

[buffalo]

Buffalo I don’t regard the imago Dei as residing in our physical shape so much as in our experienced rationality, free will, and moral responsiveness.

I do agree that the anthropoid body plan could be “built into” the universe, in the sense that it is a very efficient plan for supporting rational and moral behavior. Fish evolved with the most hydordynamically efficient body shape, and birds evolved with hollow bones. It makes sense that humans – and anthropoid creatures elsewhere in the universe – would evolve an upright posture allowing hand-brain coordination.

Perhaps having only four limbs and ten fingers are not necessary attributes of the anthropoid body plan. If six-limbedness or polydactyly evolved in a chordate on some planet, having four non-leg limbs or twelve fingers available might confer a survival advantage.

Petrus

I agree with your first statement about the image and likeness.

If the universe is indeed made with man in mind, that would mean that other worlds would need to be similar to the earth (anthropic coincidences). That would mean to me that humans would be the same with different adaptations.

So I would not expect to see big headed lizards any time soon.

 

[drpmjhess]

If the universe is indeed made with man in mind, that would mean that other worlds would need to be similar to the earth (anthropic coincidences). That would mean to me that humans would be the same with different adaptations. So I would not expect to see big headed lizards any time soon.

No, I agree – lizards are perfect for their niche, and will not replace humans. I could imagine a marsupial anthropoid platform evolving on some planet (kangaroos have their hands free for hand-brain interaction, even if terrestrial ones have very inadequate brains). We don’t have to be placento-centric about this, either. If God became incarnate in a “human” descended from marsupial primates, theology might be “Catholic” but with slightly different wordings here and there: “Blessed is the fruit of thy marsupial pouch.”

Petrus