A comment on the October 1994 special issue of Scientific American, marking its 150th year of publication, entitled `Life in the Universe'.

The editors of the special issue explain that it has been produced `to explore our universe's past, and its prospects. . . Readers will learn what science currently knows'. It was a commendable starting point for a commemorative issue of a magazine but many of the articles fall short of expectations: the authors introduce speculative material and make philosophical statements which go far beyond the boundaries of science. The very fact that these authors were allowed to drift from the editorial brief (ie. addressing what science currently knows) indicates that there is either widespread confusion about the nature of science or a conscious effort to change the meaning of science in the minds of the scientific community and the general public. This article is written to highlight some of the disturbing trends, with particular reference to Christian beliefs. Quotations are provided to document specific examples of non-scientific and anti-creation assertions. All the writers are highly regarded within the academic community for their scholarly activities.

Steven Weinberg's introductory essay entitled `Life in the Universe'has an illuminating comment on the absence of design and meaning in the universe. 

`The experience of the past 150 years has shown that life is subject to the same laws of nature as is inanimate matter. Nor is there any evidence of a grand design in the origin and evolution of life'. 

The first sentence is non-controversial to creationist biologists, as all operate on the basis that life is subject to the same laws of nature as inanimate matter. As far as I know, no one today continues in the tradition of the philosopher Kant, who maintained that biology could not be wholly scientific. The second sentence, however, brings us face to face with opposition to biblical teaching on creation: that God is the master craftsman who has created living things and who acts always with purpose. The problem is that the content of this article, and the others in this special issue, are declared to be `what science currently knows'. The ordinary reader may be forgiven for inferring that there is conflict between biblical teaching and the findings of science. Christians who seek an explanation of this situation must look a little deeper.

Stephen Jay Gould contributes an essay on `The evolution of life on the Earth' and has a lot to say on the perception that evolutionary explanations of origins reveal a pattern of progress in living things. 

` . . . the Darwinian revolution remains woefully incomplete because, even though thinking humanity accepts the fact of evolution, most of us are still unwilling to abandon the comforting view that evolution means (or at least embodies a central principle of) progress defined to render the appearance of something like human consciousness either virtually inevitable or at least predictable. The pedestal is not smashed until we abandon progress or complexification as a central principle and come to entertain the strong possibility that H. sapiens is but a tiny, late-arising twig on life's enormously arborescent bush - a small bud that would almost surely not appear a second time if we could replant the bush from seed and let it grow again.'

The message here is that attempts to introduce purpose or direction into evolutionary change have failed to grasp the essentials of the theory. Similarly, the quest to retain some sort of special status for mankind lacks any scientific merit - man was not planned, and if evolutionary history could be repeated, there is little likelihood that people would emerge again. But there must be something wrong with Gould's argument - for Christians know that the origin of animals and plants did not happen without God's purposeful word `Let it be!'. Man is not an accident of history, but a special creation of God, made in his image.

Leslie Orgel considers `The origin of life on the Earth'. He reviews the numerous attempts that have been made to form living cells from non-living chemicals, noting that the work of Louis Pasteur discredited earlier views that life arises spontaneously in decaying matter. The opportunity to revive the idea of spontaneous creation came with the theory of evolution by natural selection: 

`Darwin, bending somewhat to the religious biases of his time, posited in the final paragraph of The Origin of Species that "the Creator" originally breathed life "into a few forms or into one." Then evolution took over: "From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." In private correspondence, however, he suggested life could have arisen through chemistry, "in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc. present." For much of the 20th century, origin-of-life research has aimed to flesh out Darwin's private hypothesis - to elucidate how, without supernatural intervention, spontaneous interaction of the relatively simple molecules dissolved in the lakes or oceans of the prebiotic world could have yielded life's last common ancestor'[This is Orgel's way of saying that the nearest common ancestor must itself have had ancestors].

A key element in this research programme has been the rejection of even the possibility of supernatural creation. It is worth noting that Darwin's comments on a Creator for one or more ancestral forms are perceived as bending to `religious biases' - whereas the anti-supernatural premises of chemical evolution research are not seen as religious at all! The message that I discern in this special issue of Scientific American is that religious commitments are a powerful force in the minds of the various authors: the religion is naturalism (nature is all there is - there is no purpose, direction or causation outside blind physical and chemical mechanisms).

William Calvin's essay is on `The emergence of intelligence'. All the ideas he brings are set in the context of evolutionary reconstructions of our origins, with no reference to creation or to man's intelligence being an aspect of his being made in God's image. Stephen Gould reappears as a quotation in the last paragraph giving some thoughts on long-term survival: 

`We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited for it, but here we are.'

The term `accident' is another polemic against `purpose'or `plan' in any explanation of man's existence.

Marvin Minsky provides us with a mind-blowing excursion into the world of the future in `Will robots inherit the earth?' Even the title here has religious overtones, bearing in mind Jesus' words about the meek. Minsky starts out with the statement `Everyone wants wisdom and wealth.'How can we get them? Death beats us all and we do not achieve our full potential. How can we address this problem? First, he says, we 

`must consider how traditional Darwinian evolution brought us to where we are. Then we must imagine ways in which novel replacements for worn body parts might solve our problems of failing health. Next we must invent strategies to augment our brains and gain greater wisdom. Eventually, using nanotechnology, we will entirely replace our brains. Once delivered from the limitations of biology, we will decide the length of our lives - with the option of immortality - and choose among other, unimagined capabilities as well.'

Minsky recognises that people will view him as a visionary and acknowledges that some argue that such advances are impossible. Nevertheless, he points out, `the sciences needed to enact this transition are already in the making.' There is no acknowledgement here of how little we know about the way our memory works, or why it fails. As I read Minsky's words, I thought it was possible to discern the Tempter's voice: `You shall not die - you shall be as gods'. People today are being deceived about their role in the world and their future, just as it happened long ago to Eve in the Garden of Eden. Minsky's vision is not science, but scientism. Significantly, the starting point for his vision is the evolutionary explanation of how we came to be and where we are now.

Scientific American has provided us with a special issue which signals the dominance of naturalism in science and the acceptance of scientism as the religion of the scientific community. Whether we regard ourselves as within science or whether we are looking on, we all need to be on our guard and to challenge these views which are so influential and so harmful to real science and the intellectual health of society. It is not right that millions of young people are taught science without acknowledging that God is the upholder of all things, and without recognising that our science is but a description of what he does. It is misguided to teach them to study origins without any reference to the Creator, his design and his eternal purposes.

David J. Tyler (1995) 

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