Information Related to "Our Privileged Place in the Universe"
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Dr. Jay Richards of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based scientific think tank on intelligent design, is coauthor of the 2004 book The Privileged Planet. He is currently research fellow and director of Acton Media at the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Dr. Richards has a Ph.D. in philosophy and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary, a Th.M. from Calvin Theological Seminary and a M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary in Virginia.
The Good News: Dr. Richards, what inspired you the most to write The Privileged Planet?
Jay Richards: The book started when Guillermo Gonzalez and I first met in 1999. I noticed he was an astronomer at the University of Washington and I was at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, so I called him. Eventually we formulated a hypothesis: If you go through the list of the important things needed for habitability, do they contribute to the best conditions overall for scientific discovery?
It was that idea that intrigued us because we knew that if it was right, there would be a fundamentally new type of design argument that could be made. It would focus not only on the idea that the universe is designed for complex life, but that it was designed for discovery as well.
GN: What was the most amazing discovery you found in the research for your book?
JR: There probably was nothing as intriguing as the eclipse illustration itself with all the coincidences of size and position that have to be just right—if only because everyone is familiar with the idea of eclipses, and most people who have experienced eclipses have, frankly, a spiritual experience. It has been used in Western art for centuries.
But second to that was this increasing series of discoveries that eclipses were just the tip of the iceberg. There were all these other examples that no one had ever even considered in which these things line up, such as the discovery of the type of atmosphere we have to the type of galaxy we are in, to our location within the galaxy.
All of these different, somewhat unrelated factors disclosed this intriguing pattern that suggests what I call conspiracy rather than coincidence.
GN: How have the arguments presented in your book fared in the scientific community?
JR: The arguments have actually fared very well. The book came out in 2004 and was reviewed in prominent publications such as Nature. For the most part, it has been reviewed respectfully.
Needless to say, people who are opposed to design have for the most part attacked it. But they haven't been able to attack any of the actual arguments we've made. We had our motives attacked or superficial objections that we deal with in detail in chapter 16 of the book itself. We have been quite pleased no one has yet found any obvious errors in our argument.
GN: How has the book been accepted by the general public?
JR: The book has been very favorably received—especially when taking into account the documentary film The Privileged Planet, based on our book, which has allowed a much larger group of people to be aware of the subject than the book itself. The film has been shown on many PBS stations and TBN. It has been translated into many languages, including Mandarin Chinese.
GN: I heard astronomer Hugh Ross say there are now 323 parameters or scientific laws that have been discovered and that scientists are adding many more every year. Would you agree with that statement?
JR: I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but it's very hard to give an extensive list of all the things you need for life because you have to tease out those things that are dependent on each other.
For instance, it's important to be in a particular location within the galaxy because that determines in part how many heavy elements or metals are available to build earth-like planets. So you could make location one factor and what is called metallicity [the proportion of the planet's matter composed of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium] another factor, but they are actually dependent.
So you can't add them up as if they were independent factors. We prefer to focus on those factors that are well nailed down and are independent of each other. We take a more minimal approach whereas Dr. Ross takes a more maximal approach in terms of coming up with as many factors as you can. All you need are 15 parameters before you use up the resources that chance has within our galaxy.
GN: Can any purpose be discerned about the universe from your research on The Privileged Planet?
JR: We believe you can discern a clear purpose within this evidence from astrobiology. It doesn't come so much from noticing that earthlike planets are rare. Our argument is not based on probabilities per se, but upon a pattern. And it's this pattern of an overlap between the conditions for life and scientific discovery that is so intriguing.
You discover that the rare places of the universe where observers like ourselves can exist are also the best places overall for a wide range of scientific discoveries. That's the sort of thing you would expect if the universe was designed for discovery. It is not what you expect if you had a universe purely as the result of impersonal forces with no purpose.
So it's that pattern between life and discovery that argues for purpose and triggers the design inference.
GN: What new discoveries have been made lately about our planet and space?
JR: Several new extrasolar planets have been discovered since our book came out. They continue to confirm what we argue—that there are all sorts of ways that planetary systems can arrange themselves.
There are some theories that essentially say there are going to be certain types of planets in one part of the solar system and another type of planet in the other part of the solar system. And every extrasolar planet we discover seems to contradict that and show there are many other ways planets can arrange themselves than we could have imagined. So that suggests things have to be fine-tuned very carefully.
GN: Could you comment on the Dover, Pennsylvania, case banning teaching intelligent design in school and how damaging it has been to the theory?
JR: Well, of course, the Dover decision hasn't done anything to the arguments for design. The evidence of design is based on the natural world. A federal judge can't do anything about the evidence from nature. He also has no jurisdiction in defining what constitutes science, although he thinks he does.
But obviously, the Dover decision was a problem for intelligent design, in part because it led to the perception that intelligent design is just religion dressed up as science. I think that is a perverse claim because any argument that is based on public evidence, evidence from astronomy or biology, is a public argument. It can't be dismissed as parochial or religion.
The idea that the evidence for design has a theological or religious implication is certainly true, but virtually every discovery we find in origin science is going to have some kind of theological implication. Darwinism has theological implications. Using Judge Jones' criteria, a whole lot of what we talk about in natural science would be disallowed.
GN: What is most needed to strengthen the intelligent design movement?
JR: What is needed to strengthen the intelligent design movement at this point is more basic research on the ground. Intelligent design will succeed when many people see how fruitful it is for opening up new lines of research in the natural sciences.
I think, frankly, the philosophical arguments are there and the evidence is there for design, but scientific ideas usually succeed not by proving their case but by showing they are fruitful and lead to interesting new lines of research.
Because of the hostility to intelligent design, unfortunately much of that research has to take place off the radar screen. The problem is that the second a researcher publishes an article that argues for design, forces on the other side do everything they can to destroy the editor who allowed it and the researcher who published it. But I think that, in the end, attempts to silence the voices will not succeed
GN: How much headway is being made?
JR: There is a lot of headway being made by way of research. A lot of that has to be done behind the scenes. There are high-level research meetings taking place around the country and the rest of the world.
Since the Dover case, a lot of people have contacted those of us involved in the intelligent design movement and said they have been in the natural sciences for years and have been following this focus and are sympathetic to it. These were people we didn't know and were under the radar. I don't think an overactive, zealous judge in Pennsylvania is going to determine the outcome of this debate.
GN: How long do you think the Darwinian evolutionary paradigm will last, and can intelligent design successfully replace it?
JR: I think intelligent design will not so much replace Darwinism as it will capture everything that is true in that preceding theory. So there is nothing in the Darwinian explanation that will be lost within the intelligent design framework. It is just that the power of natural selection will be seen as it is, explaining rather trivial factors. It's real, but it doesn't explain the arrival of the fittest so much as the survival of the fittest.
Of course, the intelligent design theory is much broader than just biology. It encompasses cosmology, physics and even economics and the social sciences.
The materialists say in economics, wealth can't be created, it's just moving around physical stuff, whether gold bullion or property. But we know wealth gets created —human beings interacting with the created order are able to transform matter into new things. We take sand and make computer chips and fiber optic cable. It is just what you expect if we were created in a purposeful universe.
The Christian would say that if we were created in the image of God, we participate in His creativity and are able to create new things and wealth. The materialist has really no way of accounting for that.
I do think Darwinism as a prevailing theory within biology will, 50 years from now, be seen to have the status of Marxism or Freudianism. We will be surprised that people found the Darwinian explanation so satisfying and compelling for so long.
GN: Any final comments to our readers?
JR: I want to reiterate the point that arguments for design are common property. If you are a Christian, you will be open to the arguments for design. But they don't rest on a narrow, theological assumption. You can't consider whether the universe is designed, or look at a bacterial flagellum, or look at the argument of the privileged planet, without asking or answering the question about how to interpret Genesis 1.
Nevertheless there are profound and encouraging implications of the evidence for design for Christians because they have always believed God reveals Himself in two books—in the book of nature and in the book of Scripture.
The book of nature is God's general revelation of Himself and the book of Scripture is God's personal revelation of Himself. If both of these are true revelations, then we should expect in the long run to see both revelations agree with each other. GN
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