My last post ended by noting that “The nexus of our innate uncertainty and primal craving for design provides the spark that will illuminate the road ahead.”  There is a tacit paradox in that assertion, but it’s the kind that must be discounted since the mere absence of certainty or an indifference to an orderly universe only marks the starting point, after which the distorting role of human agency can more legitimately be indicted based on evidence, whether in science or religion.

Indeed, the reasoning behind those who support Intelligent Design seems to be reverse engineered from a conclusion that conveniently necessitates the retooling of scientific theories so they comport with its religious tenets.  They also conflate complexity with what appears to be individual agency when defining “God,” which unnecessarily returns us to conflicts with anthropomorphic notions of a deity.  This is confirmed by their insistence that Intelligent Design be taught in public schools concurrently with evolution as equally plausible explanations for the origins of life on earth.

In contrast, Christianity generally, and Catholicism specifically, is not at odds with evolution.  In 1996 Pope John Paul II told the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that “new scientific knowledge has led us to the conclusion that the theory of evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis.”

That recalls Roman Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman’s statement in 1868 that “the theory of Darwin, true or not, is not necessarily atheistic; on the contrary, it may simply suggesting a larger idea of divine providence and skill.” 

Moreover, the geologist I quoted in my last post, Charles Walcott, published a statement in 1923, which included the signatures of Herbert Hoover and such recognized leaders in the scientific community as Henry Fairfield Osborn, Edwin Grant Conklin, and R.A. Millikin, which contained the following:

“In recent controversies there has been a tendency to present science and religion as irreconcilable and antagonistic domains of thought…They supplement rather than displace or oppose each other.”

Once we understand that scientific inquiry and its findings do not threaten, negate, or undermine a faith in God, but rather magnify and intensify it, we can better grasp the limits of human comprehension, and how language and semantics are inherently complicit in the process.  To bring it full circle, staring into the yawning abyss of our uncertainty and pondering our deep desire to formulate patterns and designs from an apparently indifferent universe, does cast a kind of light onto the path ahead, but even that dim level of illumination demonstrates that something else exists, quite apart from ourselves.

The apparent indifference noted above is not something new to human experience.  Indeed, whether we consider Galileo’s first glimpse into the heavens, Hooke’s astonishment when he trained his microscope on the “little universes,” or Einstein, who first posited that mass deforms the shape of space-time, it's clear that our relative certainty of the universe’s primal forces is itself an evolutionary process, and what once seemed inscrutable or, indeed, non-existent, in time provided startling revelations, whether at the micro- or macrocosmic level.

The latest example of this is the 2008 article in Physical Review Letters, which announced the research by a team of Princeton University scientists that directly contradicts Darwinian theory.  We’re all familiar with Darwin’s standard evolutionary biology model, but you might not be as familiar with Alfred Wallace, a contemporary of Darwin’s who also contributed to the theory. 

In an 1858 essay, Wallace advanced the theory that complex systems undergoing natural selection can adjust their evolutionary course in a manner “exactly like that of the centrifugal governor of the steam engine, which checks and corrects any irregularities almost before they become evident.”  If true, the theory begins to answer the perplexing question of how organisms can be so infinitely complex if evolution is completely random?

That begs the next question:  Can organisms effectively direct key aspects of their own evolution to create functional order out of apparent randomness?  Applying the tenets of control theory, which deals with the behavior of dynamical systems, the Princeton researchers identified this self-correcting mechanism in various protein chains.  They analyzed the proteins’ responses using mathematical formulae and concluded that it would be statistically impossible for their self-correcting behavior to be random, and that they are, in fact, predicted by the equations of control theory, which is, in essence, what Wallace postulated over a hundred and fifty years ago, and which Darwin tried to rebut.

The arch and trend lines defined by our knowledge and understanding provide compelling evidence that our ability to parse our apparently ineffable universe is more a matter of time than anything else.  What appeared either impenetrable or indeed nonexistent just a few centuries ago, has since yielded vast amounts of information and a commensurate expansion of our understanding.  Evolving in concert with that process is evidence of a progressive complexity, which forces us to question whether scientific exploration has the capacity to reveal a deeper understanding of religion, and how faith in the questions concerning the primal force of the universe—God—might, in time, result in the paradoxical kind of certainty humans have always craved.

In my first post I tried to make the case that the limits of human knowledge, whether in particle physics or religion, are more closely allied than might appear to be the case. That although faith may imply a different set of empirical endorsements in religion than in science, it’s more a matter of degrees of differentiation within the same epistemic genus.

Not unlike the nature of our understanding of particle physics, which has been unveiled over time, Christianity is a revealed religion, and faith is the mechanism which provides the architecture necessary to make the transition to a paradoxical kind of certainty. However, when confronted with the apparent absence of the type of certainty we desire most, whether in science or religion, we look for ways to complete the pre-populated sequence of our understanding.

So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition. I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds, for I know very well that it is the heretical creeds that are dead, and that it is only the reasonable dogma that lives long enough to be called antiquated. (“Autobiography,” 1936)

The Crab Nebula, a remnant of a supernova, 6,000 light years,

first observed in 1054; it is expanding at a rate of 900 miles per second.

It's the first astronomical object associated with a supernova explosion.

One of the hallmarks of my political blog, ClearCommentary.com, is my effort to explore the pressing matters of the day by highlighting the insidious way that culture confounds our most vexing problems.  It’s my hope to bring the same kind of innovative and exploratory inquiry to matters concerning religion and spirituality, in particular as they may relate to the arcane world of particle physics.

As a cursory review of religious blogs shows, they tend to focus on matters of Scripture, hermeneutics, or generic spirituality, often linked to contemporary problems of morality.  The very title of my blog telegraphs a unique perspective, which is not merely the potential to meld religion and science, but a method of inquiry that seeks to take us beyond the traditional anthropomorphic and anthropocentric approaches.

That’s neither a disclaimer concerning nor a denial of the fact that I’m a Roman Catholic, and although I plan to comment on and explicate the writings of the Saints and Scripture, I’ll not limit my focus to those vital, but more traditional venues.  In light of where human inquiry—and its somewhat shadowy and circumscribed coconspirator, human knowledge—appear to be leading us, there simply no intellectually responsible way to avoid the curious, and, if you will, chaotic way that religion and physics appear to be intermingling.

I am indebted to my friend and intellectual ally, Bill Fodor, for suggesting the title, as well as many related ideas concerning content.  Finally, I look forward to this endeavor, and to the active participation of readers.

Faith & The Limits of Human Knowledge

Although there are many references to faith in Scripture, perhaps the most universally known is 2 Corinthians 4:18:

…we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

It’s axiomatic to observe that the search for knowledge, and its limits—known in philosophy as epistemology—is a timeless pursuit, one that has formidable roots in the Greek philosophers.  It’s only a slight exaggeration to assert, as the mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead has, that “Western philosophy is just a series of footnotes to Plato.”  That legacy, it must be acknowledged, was influenced by its own subspecies of thought in the Egyptians, Babylonians, and others.

It gets rather complicated at this point, so a mix of patience and curiosity is advised.  Matter is comprised of quarks and leptons, each of which is itself comprised of six particles, which are themselves co-related.  Some are rated as lighter (and therefore more stable), which belong to the first generation, as opposed to those which are heavier (and less stable), which belong to the second and third generations.  Particles are further divided into “up quarks,” “down quarks,” and a variety of other categories such as the “muon,” and the “muon-neutrino.”

In order to make any sense of this, we must segue to force and carrier particles.  There are four fundamental forces in the universe:  strong, weak, electromagnetism, and gravity.  Gravity, has an infinite range but is the weakest, and although electromagnetism is stronger it too has an infinite range.  The weak and strong work their special magic at the subatomic level.

Three of these forces are the product of “force carrier particles,” which are in the category of “bosons”—and now we’re getting closer to the core of this puzzle.  The previously noted matter particles have a mechanism whereby energy is transferred, using bosons.  Each of the four forces has its own unique boson, with special names that we won’t explore just now.  However, what’s curious is that the Standard Model is inherently incompatible with gravity, but since it’s so weak a force, it’s inconsequential.

As Dr. Nielson noted, “It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck…One could even almost say that we have a model for God, and that He rather hates Higgs particles and attempts to avoid them.”  Nielson and Ninomiya proffered their theory in the spring of 2008, and later that year after the collider was turned on, a connection between two key magnets vaporized.  You’ll draw your own conclusions, but Nielson hints at a causal relationship.

Is the scope of human knowledge effectively circumscribed by the architectural limits of the mechanisms by which we process information concerning our universe?  If, as many scientists today posit, there are eleven dimensions, are humans, in some a priori way that’s beyond our comprehension, incapable of confirming them, except in the rarefied world of postulated theory?

All of this recalls Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, in which he argued that the categorical framework of the human mind provides a self-referential blueprint that, with only an unsubstantiated understanding, defines the limits of our knowledge.  I’ll finish with a quote from the 20^th century poet, Wallace Stevens, which artfully captures this notion and sets the stage for my next post, in which I’ll explore how faith may have the potential to bridge our understanding in ways that test the presumed limits of our knowledge:

The corporeal world exists as the common denominator in the incorporeal world of its inhabitants.