the nature of god and man

8/8/2019 The Nature of God and Man

1/75

The Nature of God and Man

by

Sanborn C. Brown, PhD

Professor of Physics

Massachusetts Institute of Technology


2/75

Prepared in the mid-1960s for a discussion group of the Unitarian Universalist

Church, Lexington, Massachusetts.


3/75


4/75

The Nature of God and Man

I Introduction...............................................................1

II The Methodology of Science...................................9

III Cosmic Evolution and the Physical Sciences......19

IV Evolution and the Biological Sciences.................29

V Social and Religious Evolution.............................37

VI God, Man and Immortality...................................45

VII Is a New Religion Necessary?...............................53

VIII Glossary...................................................................65


5/75


6/75

I - Introduction

Man's search for the meaning and thepurpose of his life has been one of hismajor concerns since he firstdeveloped as a thinking being, about

100,000 years ago. In the beginning,

religion was an attempt to understand,

to accept, and in a way, hopefully to

control the phenomena of nature

which seemed pressing in about man

on every side and one of thecommon reactions of scientists before

they get deeply committed to

wondering about religion is that this

fear which drove him to ancient

religions surely has been dispelled in

the modern age because of the better

understanding of nature.

Actually, however, I think that what

our modern knowledge does is tomake it absolutely necessary for us to

reassess our understanding of religion

and to try and develop a philosophy

and theology which is agreeable to our

present knowledge of science. Now, of

course, there is more to religion than

man's desire to understand himself,

his origins, and his naturalenvironment. Man, of all the animals,

has the mental power to anticipatecoming agonies. He is inherently an

anxious animal fearful of the threat,

and defense of threats, which Rudolf

Otto termed the "tremendum." This is

a Latin word which translates as "the

source of terror." And the word is aparticularly good one because of its

strange vagueness which best conveys

the most terrifying part of our

predicament and the essence of the

terror within us and without us.

Irwin Goodenough wrote a mostremarkable book, The Psychology of

Religious Experience, and in it he has

an interesting statement about religion

in terms of the tremendum:

"Man throws curtains between

himself and the tremendum andon them he projects accounts of

how the world came into

existence, pictures of divine or

superhuman forces or beings that

control the universe and us, as

well as codes of ethics, behaviorand ritual which will bring him

favor instead of catastrophe. So

has every man protected himself

by his religions."

Now, for myself, I do not believe

either the concept of religion as an

explanation for man's place in the

universe or the image, graphic as it

may be, that religion is a curtain

protecting us from coming face to facewith the "tremendum." I do not think

this gives religion the impelling

necessity which I believe it has.

Perhaps the most spectacular

development in recent history has

been the truly amazing rise of the

importance of science and the effect it

is having on every facet of human life.

As science continues to heighten the

1


7/75


8/75

My only hope is that by discussions of

this sort mankind, as a whole, can

develop a theology which does have

an impelling validity for us as we areliving. Let me remind you that the title

of this discussion is "The Nature ofGod and Man," which implies the

nature of religion.

Let me talk about religion from a point

of view of an anthropologist, and

quote a statement or definition fromAnthony Wallace in a paper given at

the Institute on Religion in an Age of

Science at Star Island in July of 1961.

He introduced into our vocabulary the

general term "revitalization

movement" to denote any conscious

organized effort by members of asociety to construct a more satisfying

culture and he concludes that most

revitalization movements can be

characterized as religious. He points

out that all religions and religious

productions, such as myth and rituals,come into existence as part of a

program or code of religiousrevitalizations, usually originating in

situations of social and cultural stress,

as efforts on the part of the stress-

laden to construct systems of dogma,

myth, and ritual which will serve as

guide to effective rescue.

The essential theme of religion is theconflict between disorganization and

organization. On the one hand, weuniversally observe and are distressed

by disorganization in religious

systems. Metals rust and corrode

wood and cloth rot people sicken

and die personality disintegrates

social grief groups disunite and

disband.

On the other hand we universallylabor at the contrary process of

organization. Great effort is spent toprevent rust, corrosion, decay, rot,

sickness, death and disillusion. And,

at least in local groups, they achieve

gains in organization or revitalization

as the most diverse creeds attempt to

solve the riddle of the relationshipbetween life and death, organization

and disorganization, the ideas of souls,

of God, of Nirvana, of spiritual

salvation and rebirth, of "progress" areall formal solutions to the problem

which seems to be felt intimately by all

of us.

Religion may be said to be a process of

maximizing the quantity of organ-

ization in the matrix of perceived

human experience. A direct expression

of our organization instinct and if I

may again turn to Wallaces usefulterm you will understand I am using

religion in its most general meaning ofa "revitalization movement," whether

it be a revealed religion like

Christianity, or a political faith like

communism. We regard these as

extreme, but both have identical

characteristics of man's apparently

instinctive drive to develop a socio-

political religious order out ofdisorder, integration out of

disintegration, and life out of death.

Now one of the characteristics of the

so-called scientific approach to

understanding is to agree for the

purposes of a discussion and

3


9/75

argument on the definition of words to

be used within the framework of a

particular study. One does not have to

agree with the validity of thedefinition to use it in discussing a

theoretical construct, but only agree tothe same meaning of the word within

the context of the discussion. This is

probably one of the most

misunderstood facets of the scientific

method. For people who have not

been trained as scientists it worriesthem that they can agree on a

definition to argue about without

agreeing on the definition.

However, this is a powerful advantage

in the scientific analysis of a tentative

hypothesis and it is the one I want to

use throughout this seminar. In otherwords, I am giving you full license to

completely disagree with the contents

of my definition but still to agree that

when I use a word it will be as I define

it.

I will write down the definition in

each case so we will be sure we knowwhat we are talking about, and then

argue about it within that definition.

The misunderstanding of this among

the general public is quite amazing

sometimes and I am always tempted

to tell a story on myself which

involves precisely this. The definitionof a word in one context may be quite

different to a definition in anothercontext.

A physicist who lectures to elementary

physics courses is very used to

defining the word "work" as a force

times the distance in which the force

acts. Some years ago I was giving a

lecture in freshman physics at M.I.T.

and I was talking about the termwork. On the lecture table there was

a large weight which, in theengineering definition of mass, is

called a slug. It weighed 32 lbs. And

when it got to my definition of work I

carried the 32 lb. weight around at

arms length telling the students that I

was doing no work. According to thedefinition, I was not.

The next day when I was unable to

pick up the chalk to write on theblackboard because I had so strained

my back I was able to make quite a

point with my students about the

difference in definitions between thephysical definition of work and what

the normal public thinks work is.

We are going to do this in the process

of this course. In this seminar I would

like to develop a glossary of definedterms, which we must agree on as to

meaning for the purpose of ourdiscussion whether or not we have a

personal commitment to its validity. I

will have a personal commitment to it

but you may not.

The first term I would like to define is

one that I have used a number of times

so far without definition and that isthe word theology. I would like to

define theology here as any criticalintellectual attempt to understand the

beliefs and practices of a religious

community.

4


10/75


11/75

What I will develop in this seminar is

my own belief that the sum total of

everything in the universe, includingman, is the forces of nature.

Now nature has been a common word

used in many times. Let me pick out

two particular examples of what I

mean just to put it into somebody

elses words besides my own. Let me

take T. H. Huxley who in 1872 in hisbook Science and Christian Tradition

wrote:

The term nature covers thetotality of that which is. I am

unable to perceive any

justification for cutting the

universe into half, one natural

and one supernatural.

Or, let me take Santayanas statement

in his Reason and Common Sense:

Nature is the sum total of

things potentially observable.Some observed actually, others

interpolated hypothetically.

Now, whenever you start worrying

about the totality of nature, one must

deal with words which cause a great

deal of trouble. To illustrate this

problem, let me quote from another

book which I hope we can get as a

background book for this seminar. Thebook is called Science Ponders

Religion, edited by Harlow Shapley

and published by Appleton Century in

1960. This is a collection of statements

from various people. I would like to

choose one from Kirtley Mather who

is a retired geologist from Harvard.

He writes as follows under a

chapter called The Administration of

the Universe:

The rubric Administration ofthe Universe' may be used as

valid scientific designation. It

simply asserts that there is

something pertaining to the

universe which governs the

manifold operations underinvestigation and makes them

amenable to intellectual

comprehension.

Nothing whatsoever is implied

concerning the nature of that

something, what it may be is left

wide open for further study.Specifically, theologians should

note that administration is not

synonymous with administrator.

The latter term has connotations

that are not necessarily ruled out

of consideration in connectionwith the former but they are

definitely not applied when theformer term is used in a scientific

context.

On the other hand, the

theologian who truly believes

that God is spirit and not a

material entity will find a

significant similarity between his'god of law' and the scientists

administration of the universe.

Now this statement of Kirtley

Mathers brings me to the last

6


12/75

definition I want to take up tonight.

That is the definition of God.

You will notice that I believe in thescientific approach to words and if

there are useful words you use them.You may have to define them for the

purposes of your discussion but I

think it is silly not to use some

perfectly good words like 'god.' So let

me define God.

My definition of God, for the purpose

of this seminar, is an image of a

unitary system which ordains all that

was and is to be omnipotent,omnipresent, eternal, and infinite,

creator and sustainer of life and source

of all values, goals, duties, and hopes

for that life. You will also discover thatI believe this is also synonymous with

the term nature.

Now as an added statement I would

like to read a statement which is in

line with the definition I have writtendown for God, which comes from a

book (which isn't yet published andIm going to read from the

manuscript) by Ralph Burhoe who is a

professor at the Meadville Theological

School in Chicago:

"Man is completely, one might

say absolutely, dependent upon

this reality this reality beingthe reality of life. No human

thought, feeling or action cantake place apart from it. Such is

the faith of those who have

contemplated those implications

of the scientific world view.

The so-called triumph and

dominance of man over nature

and the doctrine of scientific

knowledge now makes manmore than ever master of his own

fate, is completely superficial anderroneous. We cannot alter one

jot of the cosmic law whether

it be the law of gravity or the

amount of energy available to

support life on earth.

A more exact way of reporting

the human condition is to say

that the cosmos has given to man

his life and his powers to knowand cooperate with the laws of

the cosmos such that man

becomes increasingly an

incarnation of what the cosmoshad decreed for successful and

advancing life patterns.

In his power for life man shares

with all other living forms certain

powers to take from hisenvironment certain elements

needed for his life or to rejectlethal elements. In this process he

may, within limits, mold or

manipulate certain aspects of the

environment to suit his needs.

These are gifts of the cosmos to

man, not powers that man himself

originated. In no case can manadvance his life by any means

which the cosmos has not

implicitly sanctioned already. Any

infringements by man of the

sacred rules of life can only lessenhis powers for life for there is

7


13/75

no power or capacity for life apart

from the incarnation of those

sacred conditions or patterns

which only the cosmosdetermines. It is only by the grace

of this cosmic reality whichincarnates its laws in the

genotype, the brain, and the

culture of man, that man has any

power of life at all.

Looked at in any depth, the

scientific picture of man is one of

complete dependence on the

cosmos, that man's role,

opportunity, duties, perquisitesand hopes in this scheme maybe

we shall discuss in the future.

But first it is important to recognize

that man is ultimately utterly

dependent for all he was, is and

may be, upon the cosmos.

8


14/75

II The Methodology of Science and Theology

Idefine science as man's search for theorganization of the universe. I wouldlike to examine the methodology ofscience and see how it is employed in

building up the intellectual structure

that we term scientific knowledge. The

basic assumption that we must make if

such a search is to have any meaning

whatever is that there exists an

organization. And that there is afundamental order and regularity to

nature to be found for the searching.Science, as we know it, cannot exist in

the face of the beliefs that the

operation of natural phenomena are

subject to fickle variation either from a

naturally occurring lack of order or

more anthropomorphized whim of

gods and demons.

Since the assumption of order is so

basic, science could not develop as anintellectual framework until such basic

assumptions were believed to be true

and the acceptance of criteria of

credibility based on observational

predictability became a cornerstone in

the framework of scientific

methodology. I define criteria of

credibility as acceptable tests of agiven hypothesis to check its

agreement with known facts within

the framework of contemporary

knowledge.

The early beginnings of science were

founded directly on ancient mans

search for some indication of rigid

order. The early beginnings of science

are tremendously impressive as

primitive man began to probe the

possibilities of an ordered universe. It

is worth turning back the pages ofhistory and try to capture the immense

intellectual leaps that some keen

minds must have made, first, to

conceive of the concept of order, and

then to lay plans to prove such a

remarkable hypothesis.

If the sun were really a flamingchariot, guided by some god through

the sky, then the god in human image

must surely be susceptible to human

failure. Some days he would sleep

longer than other days, some days in

his enthusiasm he would race across

the sky, and on the days when he had

a headache he would not have the

energy to use the whip on his horses.It all seems so completely logical.

The passage of time is a difficult and

sophisticated concept to consider. Yet

the intellectual geniuses among the

ancient Samaritans not only

recognized the importance of this

concept, but they were brilliant

enough to devise experiments in

which they measured time in terms ofspace coordinates, building great

temple structures so precisely laid out

in terms of the positions of the sun at

the equinoxes that their measurements

of the number of days in the year were

done to an accuracy of about 1%.

9


15/75

Before the dawn of written history, the

pre-historics conceived of order and

predictability in the universe, and

invented methods to demonstratethese. Perhaps because of these

origins, order and predictability cameto be regarded as a basic element in

the scientific approach to knowledge.

Now the intellectual discipline of

science is not unique in its operation.

To emphasize this point let me point

out its similarity to the acquisition ofknowledge in other fields. The

development of knowledge can be

differentiated into three phases:

Phase I, the acquiring of facts and

basic concepts;

Phase II, the application of these factsand basic concepts for skills to extend

the boundaries of the discipline; and

Phase III, the deep penetration into the

fundamentals which produce a basic

understanding of the inter-relationship of knowledge and the

facts which lead to furtherimplications of this knowledge. These

three phases are typical of many

branches of human endeavor.

Let me draw a couple of illustrations

outside of science. Take for example

the study of language. Phase I consists

of learning the words and grammar;Phase II, the application of this

learning to reading and writing herewe have the tools for communication

and for acquiring further knowledge.

But the real essence of the value of

language does not come until Phase III

where prose and poetry are brought to

bear on the human character, our

hopes, our aspirations, our loves, our

hates and the whole gamut of our

emotions.

Let me take another example from thefield of art. In Phase I, we must learn

to use the materials the paints,

brush, chisel, canvas, metal, the stone.

In Phase II, one learns to form the

drawing, to put the paint together to

express ones art form in a unifiedwhole. However, we do not recognize

Phase II as real art. It is not until the

human aspect or emotions are

transferred to the canvas or the bronzethat we reach Phase III and something

of real value has been contributed.

Now science has the same threephases, Phase I contains the collection

of facts, the laws and postulates, the

mathematical formulation and the

array of basic building blocks which so

often frighten the non-scientist. Phase

II involves the application of thisknowledge to the extension of

knowledge and to the technologicallyuseful devices which unfortunately

the layman often confuse with science

itself. But not until Phase III does the

scientist reach the appreciation of the

understanding of nature, its unity and

its beauty, as well as its impact on

lives and emotions of modern man.

One could ask the question whether I

am implying that the discipline ofscience can basically be differentiated

from that of art and language. The

answer is, of course, that there is a

difference. But the difference does not

lie in the mechanism of acquiring

10


16/75

knowledge. But rather that the

characteristic which sets the scientific

discipline apart from other fields of

intellectual endeavors is its particularset of criteria of credibility. A scientist

does not know what truth is, but hehas developed a remarkably successful

attitude of mind which allows him to

reach a consensus with his peers, to

test what is acceptable as an

explanation for natural phenomena

and what is unacceptable.

One of the real difficulties in following

the course of scientific development in

the historical sense is that the agreedcriteria of credibility change as a

science develops. For example, one of

the historical results of using the

concept of order and predictability asa basic argument for credibility led the

ancients to the concept that self-

consistency could serve as a basis for

truth in the scientific sense. Anyone

who has studied the emergence and

decline of the formalism of Greeklogic, which was based on the self-

consistency of hypothesis andconclusion, knows that this whole

formalism has not proved generally

useful as an over-all methodology in

science.

The necessity for change in the criteria

of credibility is an inherent feature of

scientific methodology and anunderstanding of its operation is

fundamental to an appreciation ofscience.

Let me review the basic operation of

the scientific approach to gaining

knowledge. What one does is to collect

the basic facts in the field one wishes

to study, and to create a model. I am

using model in the technical sense of

an intellectual framework constructedin agreement with the accepted facts,

which provide working hypothesesfor understanding and implemen-

tation.

Now, what you do then is to invent a

model, an intellectual structure, of

how facts may be used to explain theobservation. Furthermore, such a

model may be used to predict further

facts to be looked for which may not

now be known. Often this is called theprocess for creating a hypothesis. But

my own feeling is that the term

hypothesis has come to be used in too

narrow a sense. To me, a model is thewhole picture, and the hypothesis is a

guess in a particular area.

After a model has been put together, a

scientist must test it in every way that

his imagination can suggest. I wouldlike to take as a single illustration one

from the theory of heat. For years andyears people believed that heat was a

fluid which you could pour into a bar

(of metal) and it expanded because it

took some space or it went from one

place to the other because it flowed

down hill, not literally, but

figuratively speaking, from hot to

cold. In fact, many of the words westill use when we talk of heat are

based on this fluid theory.

As time went on it became obvious

there were some observations which

could not be explained easily by a

fluid theory of heat and an energy

11


17/75

theory was postulated. For 200 years

both these theories were taught in

universities because there was not

enough data to separate one from theother. Subsequently the fluid theory of

heat dropped out of sight and theenergy theory of heat is the one we

now use.

The important thing, however, is that

within the framework of the known

facts, the criteria of credibility wereunable to decide the difference

between an unacceptable theory and

an acceptable one. And therefore both

were used. This is characteristic of thesearch for knowledge in terms of

models which we create and then use

in various ways.

Let me say again what Ive just saidabout this criteria of credibility,

because I want you to realize that this

is not characteristic only of the

scientific approach to knowledge but

obviously also is applicable to

theology and religion. What makes amodel acceptable are the following:

First, a model must agree with

experimental facts to a sufficient

accuracy that an acceptable model

may be differentiated from a

unacceptable one. No agreement is

perfect since no model is perfect;

disagreement may mean either an

imperfect model or an imperfect set ofobservations, and in general, one may

not know which is the case. In veryrefined models which come from

theories which have been tested for a

long time the necessary accuracy for

credibility may require great precision

whereas new models, ones that have

just been thought up, very crude

agreement may winnow the wheat

from the chaff and open new vistas of

understanding.

It is true in physics at least that Nobelprizes are more often won for

agreement between theory and an

experiment within a factor of ten than

the highly precise agreement with

refined models. This leads to the

obvious conclusion that two differentmodels at the same time can explain

all the known facts.

Intellectual model-making as I havedescribed it for science is by no means

unique, as I hope you realize, to these

disciplines. The search for truth in

theology and religion can be cast inthe same mold. In theology also we

can set up a model and validate the

credibility of what we believe to be

true in terms of agreement or

disvalidate the agreement with the

model.

Take the case within the Christiantradition of the authority of the bible.

We do not have to believe that the

bible is an accurate historical

statement to appreciate that here is the

searching, the struggling, and the

thinking of approximately 2,000 years

of people in the human race,

represented and symbolized for ourconsideration here is a testimony to

a people who survived about as muchtravail and anguish as any people

could be asked to submit to. But it was

more than survival. It was survival

with a development of thought and

quality of being, a chronicle of real

12


18/75

ethical development, the testimony of

a whole culture which has weathered

the hell and high water of history.

It is a model by which to test the

criteria of credibility in theology assurely as the similar procedure in

science. It is also obvious to all of us

that there are other theological

models, testaments of other religions

against which to validate the goals

which we live by and strive for whichappear just as credible for large

segments of mankind and yet whose

basic hypotheses are quite at variance

with the tenet of the Christian bible.Thus in theology, as in physics,

different acceptable models may be

credible for different cultures

simultaneously, and within the state ofknowledge of these cultures they are

equally valid.

Now you could ask the question,

Where does one look for criteria of

credibility for a theology? I believe

that these criteria are found in thesuccess of the religious practices based

upon the theology in question. And bysuccess I mean, how well does it

provide us with valid goals and

aspirations as well as a culturally

viable medium for living with others.

It was to serve as an illustration of this

that I asked you to read Leviticus.

Leviticus is an example of a religiousmodel agreed to by the ancient

Hebrew nomadic tribes to guide theirbehavior in conformity with a

particular theological concept of a

jealous God regulating the behavior of

a chosen people. It outlines in great

detail the laws, for example, of sexual

behavior, what one can or cannot eat,

or even touch.

It also tells how to atone fortransgression of the law, and the

incredibly harsh punishment for thosewho really disobeyed the laws. But

more than that, it dictated how

commerce shall be regulated, how to

thresh and to reap and to breed cattle;

it outlined requirements for medical

treatment of the sick, and how onewas not to cut ones hair or trim ones

beard.

The integration between theology andreligions on the one hand, and cultural

evolution on the other, is in the

direction that theologies grow out of

cultures, not cultures out of theologies.So as the ancient Hebrew Bedouin

tribe became more agricultural and

started moving into cities and towns,

the rigid religious model given to us in

Leviticus began to change and many

of the stories we teach our children inschool are the stories of the changing

models based essentially on the sametheological model. The criteria of

credibility were changing and the

validity of the ancient religious model

called into question. Let me illustrate

some of these, particularly in terms of

your reading of Leviticus.

You found that Leviticus was veryspecific about mediums and wizards.

Do not turn to mediums andwizards. A man or a woman who is

a medium or a wizard shall be put to

death, they shall be stoned with

stones. And yet, if you remember the

story of Saul in 1st Samuel when he

13


19/75

was in trouble fighting David he went

to the witch of Endor and assured her

that if she could call up Samuel he

would relieve her of any fear of beingstoned to death. In other words, he

was transgressing some of the specificlaws in Leviticus.

Or we can take another one. You

remember that Leviticus said very

specifically that one must not

uncover ones nakedness, and if so itmeant expulsion from the tribe. Yet

perhaps you remember again the story

about how David when he was

bringing the ark into Jerusalemdanced naked in front of the ark and

he got away with it. True, Michel (the

daughter of Saul she was his first

wife) was very angry at him, butotherwise nothing happened to him at

all. It says in Leviticus, if a man

commits adultery with the wife of his

neighbor, both the adulterer and the

adulteress shall be put to death. And

yet we teach our children about Davidand Bathsheba. Also it says in

Leviticus that he who kills a manshall be put to death, and in the same

story of David and Bathsheba you

remember that he sent Bathshebas

husband into the forefront of the battle

so that he would be killed and so that

he could have Bathsheba for himself.

The purpose for bringing this up is togive you illustrations of changing

religious models when the criteria ofcredibility of an older model were no

longer culturally and/or intellectually

acceptable. In the overlapping

generation both models were possible

solutions just as in the case of the

theory of heat, the caloric theory and

the energy theory were both models

which as far as one could tell were

acceptable for some period of time.

Having brought into focus the conceptof model building, let me suggest that

orthodox theology has constructed

many models which, though passing

the test of credibility when they were

enunciated, have not kept pace with

our knowledge in other fields.

The strength of a viable theology, as

well as a viable religion based upon it,

must surely lie in the recognition thatmodel building is a dynamic and

evolving intellectual enterprise. Just as

scientists are constantly improving,

updating, revising, and even rejectingtheir models in their search for clearer

understanding of the operation of

nature, so should the theologians be

constantly working on their models.

If the methodology of science has any

relevance to other intellectualdisciplines, there is a keystone which

must be accepted as central. A modelis only good as long as it agrees with

all the known facts within the

accuracy of observation. When it no

longer does this, it must be rejected

without sentimentality and a more

applicable one sought for.

This lack of attachment for no longercredible models is perhaps one of the

most misunderstood facets of theoperation of science. When in 1958,

Yang and Lee received the Nobel prize

for destroying one of the main

conservation laws of modern physics

the general public was amazed that

14


20/75

the physicists acclaimed the discovery

as a great step forward instead of

being defensive and alarmed that their

ideas had been incorrect for so long.By contrast, in theology model-solving

is not generally acceptable and Iwould like to persuade you that it

must be.

With this as a jumping off place let me

point to a few details of the most

productive tool which a scientist usesin evaluating his models of nature.

One of the most important criteria for

a valid theory is that not only must it

agree with the data within the limits ofobservation, but it must predict

sensible results everywhere.

This is known technically as aboundary value problem. In most

comprehensive physical problems the

boundaries can be taken to be the

limits of zero and infinity. To illustrate

what I mean let me take a case from

cosmology.The process going on in the stars, the

source of their heat, what makes themexpand and contract and how they are

constituted in detail can be explained

in many ways. Since stars and galaxies

are not subject to mans

experimentation and manipulation, for

many years cosmology was a highly

speculative and, in the strict sense of

the word, unscientific, science.

In the steady state, and in the here andnow, there appeared to be no

acceptable criteria for the credibility of

any particular model. As boundary

value problems came to be recognized

more and more in the scientific world

as a powerful tool in suggesting ways

to validate a theory, cosmologists

turned to testing conflicting models by

extrapolating time to zero and infinity.

The conditions for testing the detailsof stellar evolutionary theory to

include sensible criteria at both the

birth and the death of a star or nebula

has proved to be a powerful guide in

sorting out the true from the false.

More progress has been made in thisarea since it was reduced to a

boundary value problem than was

ever made considering the steady

state.

Why not apply this method to

theology. Here and now man, as he is

and as he has been since the dawn ofrecorded history, is in a steady state

and surely the theologists that have

tried to explain his goals and purposes

have been many, but have lacked

anything like universal criteria of

credibility. The details of biologicalevolution of man are common

knowledge, but are our theologicaltheories valid for man as he first

emerged at time equals zero or take

prime equal to infinity?

The physicists and the biologists

predict with considerable accuracy

when our solar system will have

cooled to a point in time when manwill no longer be able to exist and he

will vanish from the face of the earth.Theology must define mans goals and

purposes of his existence to cover that

inevitable tragedy as well. Usually,

when we think of the heat death of the

universe, we say to ourselves But that

15


21/75

is so many millions of years away that

it is unprofitable to spend our time

worrying about that when we have so

many more pressing problems of thepresent to solve first.

If you are saying that to yourself now,

you have missed my point. Because

what I am trying to emphasize is that

the methodology of science tells us not

only that a solution is more likely to be

valid by requiring consistency andvalidity at the boundaries, but some of

the most difficult problems have only

been tractable by worrying more

about the extremes in time thanconcentrating on the present.

Let us look at the boundary value

solutions and we may well make moreprogress toward a reliable theology for

the present. Now of course this is not a

novel idea at all. Many of the older

theologies concentrated attention on

the creation or the last day of

judgment. In their time they were verysuccessful theological models. It

would be hard to argue against thesuccess of a religion based on a

creation of man in Gods image and an

ultimate retribution of all the trials

which beset a good man during his life

as his soul received its reward for

goodness on the last day.

This model certainly gave men goalsto live by, which gave them not only

courage and fortitude to suffer theslings and arrows of outrageous

fortune but to make them truly work

for the benefit of mankind. It was only

after the credibility of such a model

was shaken by the accumulation of

more knowledge that such a theology

was discarded as inadequate.

Let me now point to another example

which has a parallelism in theologyand religion. Physics, of the 19th

century, concentrated on measuringevery physical parameter and quantity

with ever increasing precision. In fact,

they concentrated so specifically on

detailed measurements that the

reputation of the profession was

synonymous with the highest accuracyin every detail in every particle

measured. Really, not unlike the

rigidity that you discovered by

reading Leviticus. A 20th centuryphysicist, in contrast, finds more and

more that the interesting problems of

nature to be studied are statistically

random processes. The older methodsof attention to every individual

element is no longer not only

unprofitable but to deal with the

details of each individual particle

might actually prevent the arrival at a

solution.

If you think about statisticallyfluctuating physical phenomena you

again can start thinking that it is all

very well for me to talk about atoms

and electrons, for example, as

statistically fluctuating. But when it

comes to dealing with human

individuals, the importance of the

goals and purposes of each person isas important as the next and one

cannot reduce the dignity of man tostatistical fluctuation.

If you are thinking these thoughts,

then I have again failed to make

myself clear. Because the real lesson to

16


22/75

be learned from the example of

physical methodology of statistical

fluctuation is that by dealing with the

problem as a whole, we understandbetter the nature of the individual

better even than we do byconcentrating on the individual alone.

Let me again draw your attention to

the fact that precisely this concept is a

proven methodology in the theology

upon which the reputation ofCommunism is based. Here is a

religion that is successfully embraced

by millions of people for which it

supplies in a satisfying manner thegoals, aspirations, values, and desires

for service to their fellow men. We

may firmly believe that the theological

model is wrong, but it should notprevent us from recognizing its

importance as an obviously applicable

method in this area of human

endeavors.

The last example I want to take uphere is the use of abstract concept as a

tool for developing and verifyingmodels. We all know that abstract

concepts are very much a part of the

arsenal of theological contemplation,

but there is a real difference between

abstract concepts to develop an

abstract theological construct and the

scientists use of abstract concepts to

develop experimentally verifiablemodels. Even fairly elementary

students of physics get very used todealing with psi functions, six-

dimensional spaces, and probability

density, all of which are literally

impossible to conceive of in terms of a

picture of anything.

One might be tempted to say that this

is not basically different from the

elementary theological student who issophisticated enough not to try to

picture God, the soul, or the holyghost. But there is a great deal of

difference in the technique of

validating the usefulness of these

concepts between present day

theology and present day physics. The

credibility of the theological modelbuilt on these suggested abstractions

are really not called into question.

Rather the religious person feels thatthese concepts must be taken on faith.

They are the underlying bases upon

which the entire structure is built.

Now of course the credibility of themodels in science rests basically on

faith, the faith of the scientist is that

what is experimentally demonstrable

is in fact true. But the scientist does

not take the abstractions on faith; he

uses the abstractions as a tool todevelop a model that can be tested. Let

me take a very simple example.

It is quite literally impossible for

anyone to picture six-dimensional

space. We live in a three-dimensional

universe and even the science fiction

writers have difficulties

conceptualizing a 4th dimension. Six

dimensions is a pure abstractionwhich nobody tries to picture.

Nevertheless, the elementary conceptof pressure, the atmospheric pressure

of the air about us right here, is based

on the model that the multitudes of

molecules bombarding you from every

direction in fact causes the pressure

17


23/75

which obeys certain rules depending

on the temperature, the volume of the

container and so on which when

calculated in the detail necessary topressurize an airplane or pressurize a

submarine uses a six-dimensionalspace concept as the vehicle for the

calculation. The model is thus

constructed using this highly abstract

concept as a tool for devising

verifiable theories which may be

tested for their credibility.

Now to turn to my main point,

however, about abstract concepts for

which the human mind may be toolimited to comprehend in any kind of

a pictorial form, let me emphasize the

difference between their place in

theology and in science a differenceI should point out which I find very

distressing.

The basic elements of primitive

religions were very real and

discernible. For Moses, God was somuch of a man that he could talk and

argue with him. For Tutankhamen, lifeafter death was so physical that he

provided food and drink for himself in

his tomb. The Greek gods cohabited

with mortals.

These highly successful theological

models which violated none of the

knowledge of the day were not basedon indescribable abstractions. The

generations of men who set their goalsand validated their lives by living by

these models carried very clear and

credible pictures in their minds of

God, Isis, and Zeus.

However, as the theological models of

today have required modification in

the light of man's greater

understanding of nature about him,theologians have tended to retreat

further and further into the realm ofabstraction, making it more and more

difficult for the common man to find

the basic tenets credible and being

required to take more and more on

faith.

I think everybody will agree that

really spectacular advances have

crowned the efforts of the scientific

disciplines in the last 50 - 100 yearsand many people believe that this

advance coincides with a

corresponding shift in scientific

methodology toward using highlyabstract tools to validate very real

physical hypotheses.

I feel strongly that the theologians

working to develop a dynamic

theology which can be validated by amodern religious society should study

this methodological advance whichhas proved so spectacularly successful

in the scientific world.

It is not enough to develop highly

abstract ideas of God, the soul, and

immortality. We should stop worrying

about what these concepts mean in the

physical world but use them todevelop a modern theology which can

be validated in the modern world andin the modern idiom and in complete

agreement with modern knowledge.

Let me conclude by pointing out that

Ive taken only three possible

18


24/75

examples from the methodology of

science, which could have their

counterpart in a new theology. I

believe it is vitally important thattheology come face to face with

modern knowledge.

Scientific advances have put an

incredible strain on modern society

and as man searches for those ideals

and aspirations which are of ultimate

concern to himself, his knowledge ofthe real world must be attuned to his

theology and his religious belief, if

these latter are to be the dynamic

forces in his livingthat I feel theymust be.

19


25/75

III - Cosmic Evolution and the Physical Sciences

What do I mean by a physical science?The easy way would be just toenumerate the various physicalsciences that would come to mindwhen one thought of the term

astronomy, physics, chemistry,

mathematics, etc. But this does not

really serve my purpose because of the

popular misconception of these

sciences which has so confused sciencewith technology, pure science with

applied engineering, and intellectualexercise with practical utility, that you

may miss my entire point if I do not

make a much more careful definition

than just that enumeration.

Crudely one could say that the

physical sciences are the fundamental

studies of dead matter, mans attemptto understand the nature of the

inanimate world about him,particularly in contrast to the

biological sciences which are the study

of living matter. However, I can be

much more precise in this if you will

allow me to introduce you to the

physical concept of entropy.

Entropy, which I define as aquantitative measure of the disorder

of a system, is really a measure of the

order in the universe. One of the

fundamental laws of physics tells us

that the universe around us is

becoming more and more disordered,

more and more statistically random.

Entropy happens to be defined in such

a way that an increase in entropy

corresponds to a decrease in the order

in the universe. The calculation of

entropy is at times complicated but the

concept, I think, is very simple. Let meillustrate by two examples.

If you examine a cigarette in detail, the

probability is high that within the

paper wrapper you will find tobacco.

However, as you smoke it, what used

to be tobacco becomes smoke and

ashes. The smoke becomes randomlydistributed in the air and the ashes,

more or less, randomly distributed

about the smoker. The probability of

your finding a particle of your smoke

between your fingers after you have

smoked it is vanishingly small

compared with your former chances of

finding the tobacco in your cigarette

before you smoked it. The entropy, inother words, the disorder of the

system, has increased and your

cigarette has become more random.

A second, and perhaps macabre,

example may make the concept of

entropy even clearer. Compare the

condition of your body now with what

it will be 100 years from now. Your

body is now in a highly organizedstate, an expert in anatomy knows just

where to look to find your various

organs, veins, nerves, muscles, etc.

because you are a very orderly array

of cells.

20


26/75

One hundred years from now you will

have returned dust to dust and ashes

to ashes and your entropy will be

greatly increased. Your organizationwill have disintegrated completely

and the chance of finding any order inyour structure will be negligible

compared to what it is today.

In every physical process that we

know of, entropy is always increasing,

the universe becomes moredisordered, and incidentally the

ultimate death of the universe comes

that much closer. Thus by the physical

sciences I mean those sciences whichdeal with processes in which the

entropy is always increasing.

There is a fundamental law of physicswhich goes by the complicated title of

the Second Law of Thermodynamics,

which says that in every physical

model that we have so far been able to

construct in agreement with our

observation, the entropy of everyclosed system is always increasing. In

other words, the physical world isgetting more and more disordered.

Now as a way of clarifying this

concept, let me compare the physical

sciences with the biological sciences.

The life process makes order out of

disorder, randomly distributed cells

are formed into orderly arrays, morecomplicated structures are made out

of simpler ones, and man grows froma sperm and an ovum in apparent

violation of the great principle of

physics, the Second Law of

Thermodynamics. Since, in this

biological development, entropy is

decreasing, order is being produced.

Actually, the energy necessary for lifeand biological development comes

from the sun whose entropy isincreasing with time. One can think of

living organisms as feeding on the

physical world, decreasing their

entropy at the expense of the

increasing entropy of the rest of the

solar system so that the net entropy ofthe whole system still increases, but

the biological development is different

from the physical development in this

regard.

The consistency of the Second Law of

Thermodynamics is maintained by the

total increase of the entropy of theuniverse, but life by itself is an isolated

example of a decreasing entropy

system.

Thus, within the framework of this

earth itself, the physical sciences dealwith increasing entropy systems and

the life sciences deal with decreasingentropy systems. If the universe as we

know it is running down, heading

inextricably to a fate of complete

disorder, how did it ever get started?

Cosmologists are making progress in

applying our known physical laws to

provide us with a picture of thephenomena which control the birth

and the death of the universe. But ourmodel is far from complete at the

present time.

Let me give you a brief discussion on

the evolution of our galaxy; in other

21


27/75

words, in terms of the words Ive been

using before, the model of the creation

of our universe.

You will discover that I can start this

discussion at any point and I wouldlike to start it considering space as an

enormous cloud of hydrogen atoms,

hydrogen atoms moving around in a

random fashion and occasionally

colliding with other hydrogen atoms.

One of the basic laws of physics is the

law of gravity, which says that any

material substance will attract any

other material substance according toa very known and tested law. If we

consider space to be bathed in a sea of

hydrogen atoms, these hydrogen

atoms will gradually pull themselvestogether under the force of gravity. As

they fall together, they gradually

acquire speed and when they get into

dense regions of other hydrogen

atoms they collide and transmit their

energy to other ones with which theycollide. This process is one in which

the gravitational energy is graduallychanged into random heat energy and

the gas as it collects in clusters due to

the gravitational attraction becomes

denser and hotter.

There are three recognizable stages in

the production of a star. As the

hydrogen atoms are brought togetherby the gravitational force, eventually

they will get close enough together sothat the electron patterns around the

hydrogen atoms will begin to interact.

When they interact, the energy is

released in the form of light and we

can see a visible star. The first stage in

the production of matter is merely to

bring these hydrogen atoms together

close enough so that their fields offorce can interact and light is

produced.

But this is not the end of this attraction

between the hydrogen atoms. As they

are pulled together they can get close

enough so that nuclear processes are

introduced and the heavy hydrogenatoms are fused together into helium

atoms in precisely the same

phenomenon as occurs in the

production of a hydrogen sun.

This produces enormous amounts of

energyso much so that further

gravitational collapse of the stars isinhibited. Let me remind you that one

of the most productive experiments

which physicists have been able to do

(despite ones fear of hydrogen bombs

as military weapons) was to be able to

predict exactly the phenomenon that Ihave been discussing as the origin of

stars, to such an extent that they couldproduce a hydrogen bomb and have it

go off the first time they tried it

because the model which they had

produced was accurate enough to

predict not only what elements

needed to be in the reaction but all the

details of this really catastrophic event.

In the last 50 years we have developed

sufficiently accurate models to gofrom no nuclear reactions at all to a

hydrogen bomb. In the stars this

process takes several billions of years,

the reason being that the statistical

chance of these things occurring is

22


28/75

very small and therefore one has to

wait through a very long time before

the chance encounter of the proper

elements are all available for such areaction.

In the process of fusion, the hydrogen

nuclei turn into helium. Eventually the

hydrogen is all exhausted. When this

occurs, the gravitational forces

between the nuclei take over again

and the star continues to collapse.Because of the fact that these reactions

are taking place at the center of the

star and it is surrounded on the

outside by cooler hydrogen gas, thestar, as we observe it in the heavens at

the moment in this stage, is red.

Astronomers call this the red giant

stage of a star.

When the hydrogen is exhausted and

the gravitational force starts to pull the

star together again, the temperature of

the star rises remarkably to around

100 billion degrees. At thistemperature the helium, which was

formed by the hydrogen, startsburning. I should point out that we are

unable to make a helium bomb since

the energy necessary is very much

larger than a hydrogen bomb and we

cannot get several hundred billions of

degrees by any method that we know.

The way we get the temperature for ahydrogen bomb is to explode an atom

bomb inside it which is hot enough toset the reaction off, but a hydrogen

bomb is not hot enough to set off a

helium bomb, though the stars

succeed at this very successfully. The

helium starts burning and, in the

process of burning, it makes carbon,

and with the helium and the carbon

mixed together, nuclearly speaking,

oxygen is formed.

Five or six or more helium nuclei willburn together and make neon,

magnesium, silicon, sulfur, and as the

process goes on, the red giant stage of

the stellar evolution will make all the

elements which we know at present in

the periodic table. The processcontinues until the helium is used up

and the star collapses again because of

the gravitational force. This collapses

into what is known as a white dwarfstara violent rearrangement of the

matter in the star results in a

tremendous catastrophic explosion

into what is called a supernova.

Several supernova have been observed

in the history of man, and the fact that

we have seen several of them is quite a

remarkable thing. In the supernova,

because of the explosion that takesplace, essentially everything collides

with everything else with tremendousenergy and the rest of the heavy

elements as we know them are

formed.

The stellar material so formed is

hurled into interstellar space, and a

"second generation star starts to be

formed in the same process as the firststar except the second generation star

is now contaminated with the debrisof the exploded supernova. Our solar

system including our sun is such a

second generation star contaminated

with all the elements that were

23


29/75

produced in this catastrophic

explosion.

Now let me go from galaxy formationto something much closer to home

namely, our own sun. The sun, as itwas produced, started coalescing in

the gravitational field with the debris

of an exploded white dwarf. As the

main cloud condensed, small bits of

the cloud were left behind in a

statistically fluctuating hydrogen gas.

Some particles would come together

and little clusters would be formed.

These smaller clusters did not involveso much matter as the sun, hence

when they were compressed they

were not compressed so much,

because the matter was a smalleramount, and hence they never got as

hot. These formed the planets as we

know them which were cooled quite

rapidly compared with the sun,

condensed into solid rock, and became

the planets as we now know them.

Let me now return to my definition ofentropy. You will notice that when I

started, I started building up

universes, galaxies, out of statistically

fluctuating hydrogen gas. From our

limited knowledge of science, we do

not know how big a system is required

for the Second Law of

Thermodynamics to be valid. But wedo know that once we have isolated

the sun, as a system, disconnectedfrom the rest of the galaxy as far as its

nuclear burning is concerned, the

Second Law of Thermodynamics is

definitely in operation; we have

formed an isolated system in space

and the entropy will keep on

increasing.

Disorder will continue to be the basicconcept of the solar system. To put it

another way, this means that the hotpart of the solar system will cool off,

and eventually it will all come to a

uniform temperature and it will have

arrived at a condition of maximum

entropy.

These processes are long-term

processes, they are so long term that

when I give you the numbers it means

nothing to you whatever. Thisunfortunately is a limitation of the

human mind which we can do nothing

about. I will give you the numbers

anyway.

The life history of the first hydrogen

cloud was about 20 thousand million

years. The explosion part is 10 billion

years and the second generation star

which includes our sun in our owngalaxy has an age of about 4.5 billion

years.

The question that really should be in

your mind is what has this to do with

a theological model which I am

discussing in this seminar. What I

have been presenting is the image of a

unitary system which ordains all that

was, is, and is to be...the first part ofmy definition of God.

Certainly forces which are capable of

both building up and destroyinguniverses, fall within the meaning of

24


30/75

the next word which I have in the

definition: omnipotent.

But fully as important as our ability todevelop a credible model of all that

was, is, and is to be in the physicaluniverse is the homogeneity of

absolutely every detail. Perhaps not so

remarkable is the fact that the laws of

gravity work just as specifically to

hold you into your seat as they do to

hold the solar system together, to holdthe galaxy together; and in fact to

draw the hydrogen nuclei together

which form the galaxies in their

original shape.

As I say, perhaps this is not so

amazing, but what does seem fantastic

to a physicist and to an astrophysicistis that as far as we can observe all the

elements which we know on the

surface of the earth, which we

manipulate in our laboratories, are

found in the furthest reaches of the

universesnot only are the elementsthe same, but the isotopic abundances,

the relative weight of the sameelements with slightly different

nuclear arrangements are precisely the

same whether we observe the light

coming from the most distant star or

create the light in an electric arc in our

own laboratory. There is, in fact, no

indication that what we observe as the

structure of matter in the farthestreaches of space are different in any

detail than those that we see in ourlaboratories or find on the surface of

the earth.

It is this extraordinary universality

which leads me to use the word

omnipresent'' (everywhere present)

in my definition of God.

Included in this universality of thelaws of nature is the almost certain

existence of life in other parts of theuniverse. The statistical probability of

finding other forms of life by chance

encounter may be terribly small, but

you will have discovered by reading

Shapleys book that it is reliably

estimated that there are about 100

million other galaxies.* By galaxy, I

mean an island universe (one of thewords that Shapley uses).

We are in a spiral nebula and we are

one little speck off on one side. There

are about 100 million other galaxies.*

Within our own galaxy there are about

one million planetary systems which

are capable of supporting life as weknow it.

Since we cannot postulate life in any

other form than we know it, there maybe others but there are at least_________________________________

*Today, with better data from

improved telescopes, particularly

those orbiting in outer space,

astronomers now believe the number

of galaxies exceeds 1 billion.

25


31/75

one million planets which are capable

of supporting life as we know it.

Although the chance of finding amanlike animal living in other celestial

bodies may be extremely small, thenumber of habitable worlds in the

known cosmic space may well be of

the billions. In the face of numbers like

these, the theory of probability tells us

that we are almost certainly far from

unique.

I think some of the most interesting

experiments that are being done by

physicists these days are attempts todiscover other intelligent messages in

the light or the radio waves which

come to us from other galaxies. These

experiments have not been successfulso far but this is, I am sure, a result of

our own inability to think about how

to do the right experiment.

What I have been talking about so far

has been a boundary value problemapplied to the boundary at time equal

zero I have been talking about the

origin of the universe up until now.

What about the future?

Here, I want to turn to one of theconcepts that I talked about last time,

that is the use of highly abstract

concepts which lead to very real

predictions and which have seentested by very rigid criteria of

credibility and found to be correct in

every way. I do not expect you to

understand the theory and I will noteven present it to you, but the

scientific community as a whole has

agreed that this is a valid theory.

The theory is Einstein's general theoryof relativity. When Einstein applied

this highly mathematical generaltheory of relativity to a model of the

universe he found that to be consistent

with this theory it was necessary to

postulate not only that space was

curved but space also was bounded.

The universe, a collection of dust,rock, stars, galaxies, and hydrogen

nuclei was spread out uniformly in a

spherical volume, spherically

symmetric and closed. It actuallyturned out that his spherical

assumption was not necessary. It

made the mathematics easier, but as

the mathematicians have become moresophisticated they have tried less

symmetric solutions the answer is

the same, although the mathematics is

much more difficult.

When Einstein and his co-worker atthe time, Friedmann, first calculated

the details of this universe, they firmlybelieved (and the astronomical data at

the time seemed to show) that the

universe was in static equilibrium; that

is, that the radius had a given value

and that it was staying still, however,

their solutions as they set them up,

predicted a dynamic universe. It said

that the universe was eithercontracting or expanding; it certainly

was not staying still. So sure wasEinstein and Friedmann that they had

made some kind of a mistake in their

calculations, that they added what was

called for many years a cosmological

term in their mathematics, the only

26


32/75

purpose of which was to fix up the

theory to agree with the accepted

astronomical evidence of a static

universe.

Now you all are familiar with theDoppler effect. If an automobile goes

by you honking its horn, the pitch of

the horn seems to be going down

when it passes, particularly noticeable

nowadays when an airplane goes over

your head, the sound of the airplanealways lowers in pitch after it starts

going away from you. This Doppler

effect allows you to calculate and to

measure the speed with which thingsare receding or traveling toward you.

If you dont believe it, dont get caught

by a radar used by the police, that is

precisely how they tell how fast youare going.

The astronomer Hubble, after Einstein

and Friedmann had worked out their

theory, showed that there was

irrefutable spectroscopic evidence thatthe light coming from distant stars

was shifted toward the red whichmeant that the universe was

expanding, the edges of the universe

were going away from us.

Einstein dropped his cosmological

term, returning to the equations of

relativity in their original form which

had been tested by three famousexperiments which astronomers had

carried out (the most spectacular ofwhich was to measure the bending of

light as it went by the sun).

If Einstein had had enough courage to

be sure of his original prediction, the

great discovery of Hubble would have

turned out to be another proof of his

theory. But as it was, he dropped this

cosmological term and wasembarrassed the rest or his life that he

had not believed his own theory.There is no doubt that, if one is to use

the accepted model of the theory ofrelativity, the universe is expanding.

Calculations based on the rate or

expansion now, which incidentally is

not constant but slowing down from

its original rate, extrapolated back to

time equal zero (in other words, when

the universe began) give an age of 1010

years, thus is in agreement with othermeasurements of the age of theuniverse.

What the general theory of relativity

tells us, furthermore, is that the

universe is an oscillating sphere which

expands and contracts with a

frequency so slow as to be

incomprehensible to our imagination

but nevertheless goes through thisdynamic oscillation.

This sphere is bounded and, as far as

our knowledge extends, there is

nothing outside it. This we cannot

conceive of. Our whole concept of

space must, in our human mind, havesomething outside a spherical

universe, but I suspect that this is our

fault, not the universes.

Nevertheless, we also know that this

expanding stage, which we are now

in, has already begun to slow down.

Eventually, the gravitational forces

which are always acting to pull

together matter will overcome the

27


33/75

present expansive phase and the

universe will start contracting. The

density of matter will gradually rise to

fantastic values, the temperature willgo up, and up, and up, approaching

the immense heat necessary to formnew universes, and the process will

start all over again.

What does this say about the

possibility of life in twenty thousand

millennia from now? It will be

absolutely and literally impossible.You often read that the sun is running

down, the Second Law of

Thermodynamics tells us that the

entropy is increasing, eventually thesun will burn its hydrogen out and it

will cool down.

Even if by then (and still we havesome billions of years to work on the

problem) we are able to escape the

solar system and find some more

congenial medium in which to live,

the basic expansion and contraction of

the universe predicted by the theory ofrelativity will eventually make all life,

everywhere in the universe, absolutelyimpossible.

You can quite properly ask the

question: "Am I bringing this up just

as an illustration of a boundary value

problem, or as a model which has

been successfully tested by our best

criteria of credibility? Now althoughboth of these things are true, it is not

for this reason at all, but rather for itsdeep, theological implications. Let me

point out that this theoretical

prediction of general relativity has a

direct consequence on our definition

of God. I have defined God as eternal.

The curvature of space predicts with

absolute certainty the annihilation of

all living organisms of all possible life.It rules out therefore, in my opinion,

any image of God which is aprojection of human emotions; i.e.,

love, value, hope, or even life itself.

These will all disappear when the

environment of the universe will be

sufficiently hostile in its contractingphase and therefore any image

involving any human projection is not

eternal. The laws of nature, however,

are eternal, and they are also infinite, ifby infinite you mean the furthest you

can ever go in space or time. The laws

of nature are eternal even when all life

has been destroyed.

Now perhaps one of the most

misunderstood facets of the God I

have been defining is the apparent

lack of the adjective personal. As a

characteristic of that definition, theprimitive human brain almost

automatically projects its self-image oranimistic characteristic on all it

perceives. Early men and their

religions, as well as the belief of

children, have this very definite

characteristic.

Even highly sophisticated theologians

and physicists may be thrown backonto this inherent characteristic of the

central nervous system, when aresponse is elicited largely from the

lower brain as happens under duress

and stress or even if you stub your toe.

If you listen to what people say, it is a

very personal affront which they take

28


34/75

from the stonethey may even kick it

again which does little good to them

and certainly no harm to the stone.

Yet, my personal response as a man to

these almost incredible laws of natureare as truly a satisfying religious

experience as I can imagine. The

scientific cosmos is more like the God

of the inescapable law in the Old

Testament. It is a single integrated

system of reality and the law of itsoperation creates and sustains all that

is from everlasting to everlasting.

It is more like the deity portrayed inreligions where man must serve and

obey, rather than like the ones which

include Judeo-Christian religion

where the deity is as man can imaginehim, and perhaps even manage him

and persuade him.

The only God that contemporary

science allows is an immutable system

of reality, so superhuman in characterthat no human pressure of any kind

can avail to change it. All that man cando is to seek the law of this deity and

adapt and conform, or else cease to be.

Yet, I often wish I were some kind of a

poet, to be able to show you what a

scientist feels about his science. The

scientist, by the nature of his

profession, revels in the closeness ofthe stupendous vastness of the

unknown which most of us one wayor another define as God. Perhaps few

of you in this room have been able to

really experience the incredible

vastness of the heavens.

But imagine that you were with me

when I was young, standing on a

moonlight night on the top of a

mountain which you never heard of,called Ein-en-Sur. The Lebanon

mountains 50 miles to the west actedas an impenetrable barrier for the

clouds from the Mediterranean. The

nearest electric light is in Damascus,

80 miles to the southeast and shielded

from us by the foothills of Mt.

Hermon. In the early 1920sautomobiles did not travel at night on

the dusty unpaved roads far to the

south, for a breakdown would surely

mean an unpleasant encounter withroving bandits.

Stand with me on this isolated peak

and look up. The stars are oppressivein their brilliance, the Milky Way is

not a dim band which in Lexington,

Massachusetts, you sometimes

confuse with weak northern lights, but

a brilliant band of myriad dancing

stars. Mars is like a great red beaconand the Andromeda nebula a

mysterious, ill-defined, shiny cloudwhich cannot help but draw your

thoughts out beyond the confines of

the world. Our solar system is an

insignificant dot in the nebula we call

our universe. All the stars we see from

this mountain of ours are in our

universe, except the Andromeda

nebula.

The Milky Way, whose stars are sonumerous that we cannot resolve them

into separate points of light, are the

arms of the great spiral nebula in

which we exist. Nor is our universe

unique, for although the nebula in

29


35/75

Andromeda is the only other one we

can see with our naked eye, there are

millions of others. Together these

nebula form a super-galaxy which wecan describe as bounded, though the

human mind cannot appreciate this,and there is nothing outside. In these

vast reaches of space, all physical laws

are identical as we know them. Every

element in the cosmic dust deviates

not a bit from the elements that we

know. The law of gravitation attractsuniverses as surely as it attracts us.

Our cosmic view of the super-galaxy

lets us realize that there are about 100million other galaxies, other universes

beside our own, and that within our

own universe there are about one

million planetary systems capable ofsupporting life as we know it.

Now if we come back from our view

of the super-galaxy, back to the spiral

nebula of our universe, back to the

solar system whose very center ofexistence is the sun, actually

indetectably small on a cosmic scale,and finally back to our lonely

mountain top, we find ourselves so

insignificantly minute in the cosmic

scale that we really cannot describe

our smallness.

These are the thoughts which make

many scientists deeply religious. Formy own self, as I spend hours, days,

and years, in my laboratory, piecingtogether the intricacies of one small

piece of research, adding one small bit

of knowledge to the great discipline

we call sciencewhen the answers do

come, they show a fundamental

simplicity, order, and real beauty of

nature which at times becomes almost

overwhelming. My science and

religion become one, and myreverence for nature is my reverence

for Godreverence for my ownpersonal god, because I am a person,

because I am a man thinking these

thoughts.

30


36/75

IV - Evolution and the Biological Sciences

Last week we talked about evolutionand the physical sciences, which Icharacterized as entropy increasingsystems. You will remember that Idefined entropy as the quantitative

measure of disorder of a system, and

the physical universe as one in which

the entropy is always increasing. That

means the disorder in the universe is

always increasing.

Tonight I want to talk about evolutionand the biological sciences, which I

will characterize roughly as entropy

decreasing systems, that is, systems in

which the disorder of the system is

becoming less, becoming more

ordered rather than more disordered.

The characterization of life as an

entropy decreasing system is anecessary but not sufficient condition.

It is true that living organisms avoiddecay by eating, drinking, or in the

case of plants, assimilating what one

might call negative entropy. That is,

they are continually drawing from

their environment what is often

characterized as negentropy. the

opposite of entropy. An organism's

astonishing gift of concentrating astream of order into itself and thus

escaping the decay into atomic chaos

(you might almost consider it as

drinking orderliness from its

environment) is intimately connected

with a self-replicating mechanism, the

details of which I hope you learned

about in the reading which I assigned

for this seminar.

What I am saying is that the difference

between the physical universe and the

biological universe is that the physicaluniverse is always becoming more

disordered. The biological systems are

becoming more ordered, but that is

not a sufficient condition. It also has

the characteristic of being self-

replicating, that means it can

reproduce itself. It is this concept

which I want to dwell on for a littlewhile, because I want to be sure that

you understand what I mean. There

are actually two ways of producing

orderliness. One is called a statistical

mechanism which produces order-

from-disorder. The second method is

called the self-replicating mechanism

which produces order-from-order. Let

me explain what I mean in moredetail.

There is a perfectly standard method

in the physical world of producing

order from disorder statistically, when

things crystallize, for example. If you

take water and you cool it down close

to the freezing point, before it freezes

the atoms of the water (the hydrogen

and oxygen atoms) start collectingstatistically in places where they will

freeze into the crystal when the

temperature becomes sufficiently low.

That is a random process, but you can

study it by x-ray analysis and discover

that on the average the hydrogen

atoms get into one position and the

31


37/75


38/75

Mutations (which is a word I hope you

came across in your reading for this

week) are chance accidental changes inthe alphabet of the code. In the picture

of my volume of books, they are sortof typographical errors that are then

passed on from parent to offspring

and are inherited. Ninety-nine percent

of all mutations are either lethal or

deleterious to succeeding generations.

Less than one percent may confer anadvantage to its possessor at a given

time and in a specific environment. It

is such occasional rare beneficial

mutations upon which progress inbiological evolution depends.

Biological evolution by natural

selection is thus a very slow andwasteful way of transmitting progress.

Again, I hope you read the first

chapter ofHawaii and got the feeling

of the tremendous scope of time and

waste of attempts which go into the

evolutionary process . It has takenover two billion years to produce,

from simple virus-like structures,

complex species including ourselves,that now inherit the earth. For these

species here today, millions have

perished in the course of

environmental screening by natural

selection.

Let me return for a minute to theboundary between order-from-

disorder, which is like a crystal

freezing out, and order-from-order, ahuman being produced by its growth

from the DNA coded molecule. The

line between living and non-living

systems has become increasingly

blurred in recent decades, with the

discovery that viruses are nuclear

protein molecules some of which, like

the tobacco virus, can be made to crossthe boundary between the statistical

and the self-replicating mechanismalmost at will.

There is a long series of experiments

carried out with the tobacco virus

which I would like to talk about for

just a few minutes. It can take twoforms. It can be crystallized as a

simple chemical crystal, or, by taking

the crystal and putting it into a

nutrient solution and keeping thetemperature just right, it can be made

to turn into a virus. You can do it back

and forth. When it is a virus, it is self-

replicating. It grows. It producesoffspring, and it is susceptible to

temperature variations which will kill

it if you heat it up too much and kill it

if you cool it down too much.

However, if you take this same virus,take away its nutrients, you can

crystallize it into an ordinary crystalwhich you can then heat to

tremendous temperatures, you can

cool to as cold as you can get it, and

nothing happens to it whatsoever. It is

not self-replicating, it can crystallize,

you can dissolve it, and re-crystallize it

and it behaves like an ordinary salt

crystal.

But still, after you have treated it as acrystal, you can then put it back into

its living form and it behaves like a

virus. Perhaps it is not at all surprising

that these boundary cases should be

found. We are discussing a sort of

33


39/75

continuous development of the

evolution of life, and eventually of

man, out of the primitive stuff of the

universe, and it would be surprising ifwe did not find some intermediate

forms.

Living organisms are

the nature of god and man

Documents