Theology and Science

From Genesis to Astrobiology

Joseph Seckbach, Richard Gordon

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9789813235052
• Topic: Ciencias biológicas
• Subtopic: Ciencias en general

The age-old debate between science and faith invites more players to the fore in this book. Proponents of the origin of life as a natural process and natural selection as a mechanism of evolution come face to face with advocates for the intervention of a creator, while other scholars believe that the gulf between science and religion should be bridged.

At turns disconcerting, revelatory, and profound, readers are invited to leave their preconceived notions at the door and join these writers in this curious journey of discovery.

Contents:

• Astrotheology:
  • Astrobiology as Contemporary Theology (Dawn Skjei Cooley)
  • Astrobiology and Astrotheology in Creative Mutual Interaction (Ted Peters)
• Approach of Jewish Studies:
  • Science and Medicine in Talmudic Literature: Ancient Jewish Knowledge Compared to Modern Understanding (Mordechai Halperin)
  • The Science of One Life at a Time (Robert Pollack)
  • Science and Exegesis: A Case Study of Genesis 1 (Robert B Sheldon)
• Theology Critics:
  • On Language and Nationhood: Lessons from the Tower of Babel (Abraham Berkowitz)
  • Cosmic Conspiracy Theories: How Theologies Evade Science (Taner Edis)
  • Free Will: Science Reveals the Seat of Our Power to Choose (Gerald L Schroeder)
  • Science versus Religion: The Fallacious Conflict (Frithjof A S Sterrenburg)
  • Scientific Thinking versus Religious Thinking from a Viewpoint of a Secular Science Educator (Shlomo Vinner)
• Interaction Science — Theology:
  • Rabbi Kook's Teachings on the Theory of Evolution: The Human Ethics (Dov Berger)
  • The Delusion of Unethical Science Popularization: Astrobiology in an Ethical Dialogue of Faith and Reason (Julian Chela-Flores)
  • From Matter to Emergence: Scientific and Theological Views on the Nature of Life (George V Coyne)
  • Confluence Between Biblical Truth and Scientific Facts Must Emerge for Wise Stewardship of God's Creation (Robert Y George)
  • Wonder and the Necessary Alliances of Science and Religion (Scott F Gilbert)
  • Center to Circumference and Back: Theology and Science in Rabbi M M Schneerson (Meir Klein)
  • Big Bang Cosmology and Christian Theology (Joshua M Moritz)
  • 'Man-as-an-Animal Needs Religious Faith': Rabbi Soloveitchik on Evolution and Divine Image in The Emergence of Ethical Man (Rachel S A Pear)
  • The Trouble with Thomists (Michael J Behe)

Readership: Readers interested in the relationship between science and religion.Theology;Intelligent Design;Darwin;Theory of Evolution;Torah;Bible;Quran;Natural Selection;Origin of Life;Science and Religion;Astrotheology0 Key Features:

• Written by academics of various faiths and religions, including atheists
• Discusses fundamental questions in science

Part I

Astrotheology

Chapter 1

Astrobiology as Contemporary Theology

Dawn Skjei Cooley

Abstract

For as long as Homo sapiens has existed, we have gazed up into the stars and told stories. From ancient times to contemporary, this story-telling continues. It is our human imperative to look for and make meaning — this is the foundation for the establishment of religions. It is also the impetus behind the creation of the field of astrobiology. We cannot help but look at the cosmos and wonder about the potential for life out there. This article examines the vastness of the universe, the potential forms and types of communication possible with extraterrestrial life (ETL), potential religious and secular responses to the discovery of ETL, and the relationship of ETL to religious institutions and to faith.

Introduction

For as long as Homo sapiens has existed, we have gazed up into the stars and told stories: stories about the gods who dwell in the heavens; stories about life that might be out there; stories that indicate that we might be from “out there.” As anthropologist Kathryn Denning (2011, p. 671) points out “people were considering what contact with life from another world would be like long before we had the scientific means to actually search for it”.

The explosion of the science fiction genre in the early 20^th century expanded our storytelling about what may or may not be “out there.” As of 2015, IMDB indicates that nearly half of the movies in the top 10 “All-Time USA Box Office” list deal with extraterrestrial life (ETL) in some shape or form.¹ We love speculating about aliens.

Our science and technology are beginning to catch up with our imagination. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute tracks its modern history back to 1959, the year that Nature magazine published an article by two Cornell physicists who shared that microwave radio could be used to communicate between the stars (A History n.d.). From that point on, individuals, public governments, and private organizations have continued to search for intelligent life outside our planet. Meanwhile, the search for microbial life is reaching its historical apex with the Curiosity rover which landed on Mars on 6 August 2012. This rover has been able to dig into the surface of Mars, peeking under the top layer of dust that has been bombarded with solar radiation for billions of years to see if there might be evidence of life hiding out safe in the darkness (New Rover 2012).

But will all this searching for and speculation about ETL ever become a reality? Will all our looking up at the heavens ever reveal anything as amazing as what we might imagine? And what might happen when we find (or don’t find) evidence of ETL? As Carl Sagan wrote in the movie Contact, “If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space” (Guber et al., 1997).

The vast cosmos

How much of a “waste of space” are we really talking about? A brief summary of the nature of our cosmos is in order as we consider the possibility of ETL.

Science has indicated that the Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, which is also the approximate age of our Solar System. We reside around two thirds of the way out from the Galactic Center of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is estimated to be about 13.2 billion years old (approximately the same age of the universe, which is somewhere around 14 billion years old.) The Milky Way is one of between 80–100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

In the 14 billion years that the universe has existed, there has been a lot of planetary activity. Using current data from the Kepler telescope, NASA estimates that there are at least 50 billion (50 × 10⁹) planets in our Milky Way Galaxy, and that 500 million (or 1 percent) of these are likely in what is considered a “habitable zone.”²

According to Paul Davies (1995, p. 23), the Copernican Principle, also called the Principle of Mediocrity, tells us that our planet “does not occupy a special position or status in the universe. It is apparently a typical planet around a typical star in a typical galaxy”. If this is the case, and we assume that we are about average as far as galaxies go, one can make the case that there are 50 billion (50 × 10⁹) planets, multiplied by 80 billion (80 × 10⁹) galaxies, or 4 sextillion (4 × 10²¹) planets in the observable universe (40 quintillion (40 × 10¹⁸) in a “habitable zone”).³

These vast numbers and computations are the basis for the Drake Equation, which is used to guesstimate the number of technologically advanced civilizations which might be present in just the Milky Way Galaxy. Nobel Prize winning physician Dr. Baruch S. Blumberg, who served as the first Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at NASA’s Ames Research Center, shared these in his paper presented to the Royal Society of Mathematical, Physical & Engineering Sciences (2011, p. 510), “There is a theoretical belief that life must be present elsewhere because there are so many places for it to do so”. The Drake Equation provides a formula to make these predictions and Blumberg notes the identification of more than 400 extrasolar planets has increased the accuracy of these estimates.

Astrobiology

The problem with the Drake Equation⁴ is that many of the units are elements that cannot be verified. It is mostly theoretical. However, as a tool meant to spark conversation, it has been very successful. Particularly for those interested in the field of Astrobiology, a relatively new⁵ multidiscipline field of science which draws on Astrophysics, BioChemistry, GeoChemistry, GeoPhysics, Planetary Science and more (Delano, 2011). Blumberg points out that,

Astrobiology is the study of the origins, evolution, distribution and future of life in the Universe, or, specifically, to understand the origin of life and to test the hypothesis that life exists elsewhere than on Earth. It raises fundamental questions not only in biology, physics and chemistry but also in philosophy, psychology, religion, theology and the way in which humans interact with their environment and each other (2011, p. 508).

The core idea behind Astrobiology is the realization that physics, mathematics and chemistry each form a set of scientific laws that pertain on Earth and elsewhere in our Universe. Does the same, then, hold true for biology? Are there rules governing the formation and evolution of life that can be found elsewhere, in similar or even in totally different biochemical environments? Appealing again to the Copernican Principle/Principle of Mediocrity, physicist/cosmologist/astrobiologist Paul Davies (1995, p. 23) reflects “Applied to the question of extraterrestrial life, the principle suggests that if there is nothing special about the astronomical, geological, physical and chemical circumstances of Earth, then there should be nothing special or unique about its biology either”.

NASA’s Astrobiology Roadmap,⁶ published in 2008, “provides guidance for research and technology development across the NASA enterprises that encompass the space, Earth, and biological sciences” (Des Marias, 2008, p. 715). The roadmap addresses three basic questions:

(a)how does life begin and evolve?

(b)does life exist elsewhere in the universe? and

(c)what is the future of life on Earth and beyond?⁷

The remainder of this article will briefly touch on the first two questions, with a focus on the ramifications for humankind when/if we discover life elsewhere (or if we somehow determine that we are unique in the universe).

An imperative to life?

Two questions are the core of this search: Where did we come from? And, Are we alone? Davies (1995, p. 21) points out three philosophical positions concerning the origin of life:

(a)it was a miracle;

(b)it was a stupendously improbable accident; or

(c)it was an inevitable consequence of the outworking of the laws of physics and chemistry, given the right conditions.

Evidence is leading away from (a) and (b) and suggests an inclination toward (c) that it was inevitable. Part of the evidence toward this theory rests on the work of Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1953, when they attempted to simulate the conditions on Earth 4 billion years ago. They “introduced water, methane and ammonia into a glass flask and passed an electric discharge through the mixture for several days. The liquid turned red-brown. Upon examination, the flask was found to contain several amino acids — organic molecules found in all living organisms on Earth” (Davies, 1995, p. 13).

Christian de Duve (2011, p. 620), a Nobel Prize-winning cytologist and biochemist, argues that “the enormous diversity and adaptability of the living world are proof that natural selection has, in a large number of cases, been offered enough variants by chance to approach optimization, that is, reproducibility under similar conditions”. He is suggesting that if we rewind the “tape” of evolution and play it again (from the beginning of Earth), running it forward to the present, we will likely get the same biological results, because there were a large number of chances for a particular mutation over a very large period of time. de Duve concludes (2011, pp. 620–623) that the emergence of life is obligatory under these physical–chemical conditions.

So what about different physical–chemical conditions? Is there an imperative to other forms of life as well? Christopher P. McKay has been called the “Indiana Jones” of NASA (ZDNet, n.d.), and is a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, studying planetary atmospheres, astrobiology, and terraforming. McKay looks at life in extreme conditions on earth in an effort to learn what life might look like in similar conditions on other planets. He explains (2011, pp. 595, 600) that if we are able to find life that arises out of a different type of biochemistry than what is currently known on Earth (that is, life that is not DNA/RNA based) then we will have a basis for comparison and can be confident that there is indeed an imperative to life. “If life started twice in our Solar System we can then be certain that life is not a fluke but a natural outcome of planetary environments”. For instance, McKay uses the example that if life forms are living in the liquid methane on Titan (the largest moon of Saturn), “such life would clearly represent a different origin of life than Earth life”.

Potential forms of ETL

Same biochemistry or different? Similar origin of life than Earth, or different? What types of ETL are we talking about, and why does it matter?

Not long ago, the word “alien” was used to refer to any life that was on another planet. Now, however, astrobiologists point out that we might find “alien” life here on Earth, and we might find “Earth” life on another planet. How does this happen and what do these different terms mean or imply?

ETL refers to any type of life form that is found to have emerged on any planet other than Earth. It may be as simple as (Kluger, 2004) bacteria found on the “blueberries” (or just under the surface) on Mars.⁸ Or that life may be as complex as life that is intelligent (extraterrestrial intelligence or ETI).

For astrobiologists, what matters at least as much as where the life is found is where/how the life originated. For example, the panspermia hypothesis suggests that “life may have arisen elsewhere in the galaxy and fallen to Earth from space, whereupon, having encountered conditions favorable to multiplication, it took hold and thrived” (Davies, 1995, p. 20). If this is the case, then the originating site of life, and anywhere else that might have gotten “seeded”, may be ETL, but because it comes from the same biochemistry and the same “tree of life”, it would not be considered alien (McKay, 2011, p. 594).

For ETL to be considered alien, it has to have arisen out of different biochemical circumstances. This is called a second genesis. McKay points out (2011, p. 598) that using Mars as our primary subject of exploration is problematic if we are searching for this second genesis due to Mars’ “proximity to Earth and the possibility that these two planets have exchanged biological material. It is now established that many of the meteorites found on Earth have come from Mars”.

Interestingly enough, it may be that we are able to find evidence of a second genesis here on Earth. Our biochemistry is based on carbon and water. It is conceivable that we might find life that is based on silicon or methane. McKay points out (2011, p. 595) that “At one time, the term ‘alien life’ referred to any life from another planet; now we realize that life on another planet may be the same type of life as we know from Earth. The term ‘alien life’ now refers to an organism that is not on our tree of life, regardless of what planet it is on. Alien life might even be here on the Earth”.

Potential forms of contact

Alien or not, if we find ETL, what forms might it take and what is the likelihood that we might be able to communicate with it? Albert Harrison is a social psychologist who was a member of NASA’s Space Human Factors Engineering Science and Technology Working Gro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• Contents
• Preface
• Prologue on Why
• Part I Astrotheology
• Part II Approach of Jewish Studies
• Part III Theology Critics
• Part IV Interaction: Science — Theology
• Epilogue on Why
• Index