een fysicus over de

kosmos, de aarde en het

leven

Dr. Ard LouisDepartment of Physics

University of Oxfordwww.cis.org.uk

www.faraday-institute.orgwww.cpgrad.org.uk

Botsende culturen?• Christelijke subculturen• Wetenschapelijke

subculteren• cultuur ligt vaak onder

de oppervlakteWoordenGewoontenTraditiesGedragGeloofWaardenAanamen

Mijn argument: Much of the tension between “evolution” and “faith” is due to unrecognized “cultural assumptions”

Mijn argument: Much of the tension between “evolution” and “faith” is due to unrecognized “cultural assumptions”

• Bijbel aan de grondslag van mijn leven• Ik ben classiek evangelisch/charismatisch in

mijn Bijbel interpretatie en praxis • Wetenschap heeft een dienende relatie, geen

gezag – kan b.v. helpen met interpretatie• Henri Blocher “In the Beginning” IVP (1984) p 25

• Nooit ons wereldbeeld boven de Bijbel• B.v. Copernicus/Galileo en Aristoteles

Beginnen met de Bijbel

• Culturele verschillen:• Metaphoren zijn belangrijk

• Toeval etc…• Antropomorphisatie (survival of the fittest)

• Waarom een groot verschil tussen Christelijke profesioneele wetenschappers en leken?

• Wetenschappelijk “bewijs” met tapijt argumenten

Biologische self-assembly

http://www.npn.jst.go.jp/ Keiichi Namba, Osaka

• Biologische systemen self-assemble (ze vormen zichzelf)• Kunnen we dat begrijpen?• Kunnen we het nabootsen? (Nanotechnologie)

04/12/23

Virus self-assembly

viruses

T=1 T=3

Self-assembly van “computer virusen”

Monte-Carlo simulaties: stochastische optimalisatiehttp://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/user/IainJohnson/

Computer virusen?

Self-assembly met lego?

C.M. Dobson, Nature 426, 884 (2003)

Eiwitten en het Paradox van Levinthal

Levinthal Paradox:150 amino acids~10 angles between them ~10150 different states.How does protein find its folded native structure?

Levinthal Paradox:150 amino acids~10 angles between them ~10150 different states.How does protein find its folded native structure?

we used same design principles to make viruses self-assemble

we used same design principles to make viruses self-assemble

CULTUUR VERSCHIL:Physici/Chemici/Ingenieurs vinden dit belangrijk;Biologen niet zo belangrijk

CULTUUR VERSCHIL:Physici/Chemici/Ingenieurs vinden dit belangrijk;Biologen niet zo belangrijk

Biologicsche self-assembly

Als we het niet zouden zien zouden argumenten er tegen sterk lijken(Levinthal)

“onmogenlijkheids argumenten” hebben weinig success in de biologie

Als we het niet zouden zien zouden argumenten er tegen sterk lijken(Levinthal)

“onmogenlijkheids argumenten” hebben weinig success in de biologie

Hoe interpreteren we de natuur?:

Natuur Theologie:• Paley – Newman – Barth …..

• The fundamental thesis of the book is that if nature is to disclose the transcendent, it must be "seen" or "read" in certain specific ways -- ways that are not themselves necessarily mandated by nature itself. It is argued that Christian theology provides a schema or interpretative framework by which nature may be "seen" in a way that enables and authorizes it to connect with the transcendent.

• --- A. McGrath p x about "the Open Secret"

Wonderlijke toepasselijkheid van de taal van de wiskunde

+Schrödinger equation (Quantum Mechanics)

Energy-Momentum (Special Relativity)

= Dirac Equation (1928)

Electrons

Positrons (antimatter) discovered 1932

Quantum Mechanics + Relativity = Antimatter

Zie ook: “The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem”, Mark Steiner HUP (1998); "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960), Eugene Wigner

Zie ook: “The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem”, Mark Steiner HUP (1998); "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960), Eugene Wigner

Paul Dirac1902-1984

Wij zijn gemaakt van sterrenstof: He C via een resonancie

• “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics .. and biology”

• His atheism was “deeply shaken”

Sir Fred Hoyle, Cambridge U

Tapijt argumentenWetenschap als een “tapijt” --de kracht ligt niet aan één enkele draad maar aan het geheel en hoe ze zijn zamengewoven.

Je kunt aan een paar draadtjes trekken, maar daardoor breek je het tapijt niet.

.

The Golemization of Relativity, David Mermin, Physics Today 49, p11 April 1996

Ik geloof net zo in het christendom als dat ik geloof dat de zon is opgegaan – niet alleen omdat ik hem zie, maar omdat dit mij in staat stelt om al het andere te zienC.S. Lewis, “Theology as Poetry” in The Weight of Glory,

Ik geloof net zo in het christendom als dat ik geloof dat de zon is opgegaan – niet alleen omdat ik hem zie, maar omdat dit mij in staat stelt om al het andere te zienC.S. Lewis, “Theology as Poetry” in The Weight of Glory,

Natuurgeschiedenis

In our galaxy there are 100,000 million stars, like our sun. our galaxy is one of 100,000 million galaxies. In a throwaway line in Genesis, the writer tells us, "he also made the stars" .. Gen 1:16

Grootheid van Godhet universum:100 miljard stellenstelsels, met elk 100 miljard sterren•De hemel verhaalt van Gods majesteit - Psalm 19•Wat is de mens? Psalm 8

Natuurgeschiedenis

Grootheid van GodAnaloog aan het universum:•Ruimte tijd 24 uurige aarde – je leven = 1 milliseconde•De hemel verhaalt van Gods majesteit - Psalm 19•Wat is de mens? Psalm 8

Natuurgeschiedenis

• EMOTIONEEL DEBAT ? Determineert waar we vandaan komen wie we zijn en hoe we zouden moeten leven?

• EMOTIONEEL DEBAT ? Determineert waar we vandaan komen wie we zijn en hoe we zouden moeten leven?

Intermezzo: het vertroebelend woord Evolutie

1) Evolutie as Natuurgeschiedenis•De aarde is oud(+/- 4.5 Billion years)•Complexere levensvormen volgen op simplere levensvormen

2) Evolutie as a mechanisme voor biologische complexiteit•Mutaties en natuurlijke selectie(note: Christenen zijn het er over eens dat God dit geschapen heeft)micorevolutie, immuunsysteem etc…

3) Evolutie als wereldbeeld (evolutionisme)George Gaylord Simpson: "De mens is het resultaat van een doelloos en natuurlijk proces

dat hem niet heeft bedoeld. Hij is niet gepland. of Richard Dawkins:"Darwin maakt het mogelijk om intellectueel vervulde atheist te

zijn.”Zie ook Bas Haring, Midas Dekkers, etc..

Tapijt argumenten: case study 1: een oude aarde ?

Science is a tapestry -- you can pick at a few strings, but that doesn’t break the whole cloth

•Radiometric dating (many overlapping isotopes) •ice cores:up to 8000 years -- volcanoes like Vesuviusup to 740,000 years•Milankovitch cycles•Tree rings•All these methods (when used properly) agree. There is no scientific controversyhttp://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

Tapijt argument: een oude aarde ?

Milankovitch Cycles: here seen in 420,000 years of ice core data from Vostok, Antarctica research station.

Common descent in biology?

Page from Darwin's notebooks ~ circa1837 showing his first known sketch of an evolutionary tree depicting common descent.

Case study 2: evolution of horses

Can sound like weak inductive reasoning to many physical scientists

Divergence of the chimpanzee and human lineages occurred about 6 million years ago; the times of lineage divergence are not to scale

News & Views: The chimpanzee and us, Wen-Hsiung Li and Matthew A. Saunders, Nature 437, 50-51 (1September 2005) .

Case study 3: common descent of human & chimp?

tapestry arguments in biology: chromosomal

banding:

The origin of man: a chromosomal pictorial legacy. J.J Yunis and O. Prakash, Science 215, 1525 (1982)

Humans have 46 (2 X 23) chromosomes

Apes have 48 (2 X 24) chromosomes

chromosome 2: Human, Chimp, Gorilla, Orang-utan

tapestry arguments in biology: fusion of chromosome 2?

chromosome 2: Human, Chimp, Gorilla, Orang-utan

tapestry arguments in biology: evidence from the human

genomeChromosome 2 is unique to the human lineage of evolution, having emerged as a result of head-to-head fusion of two acrocentric chromosomes that remained separate in other primates. The precise fusion site has been located in 2q13−2q14.1 (ref. 2; hg16:114,455,823−114,455,838), where our analysis confirmed the presence of multiple subtelomeric duplications to chromosomes 1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 19, 21 and 22 (Fig. 3; Supplementary Fig. 3a, region A). During the formation of human chromosome 2, one of the two centromeres became inactivated (2q21, which corresponds to the centromere from chimp chromosome 13) and the centromeric structure quickly deterioriated [42].

Generation and annotation of the DNA sequences of human chromosomes 2 and 4, L.W. Hillier et al., Nature 434, 724 (2005).

endogenous retroviruses

In humans endogenous retrovirus sequences make up about 1% of the genome.

Lebedev, Y. B., et al. (2000) "Differences in HERV-K LTR insertions in orthologous loci of humans and great apes." Gene 247: 265-277.

HERV-K insertions

tapestry arguments in biology: more threads of

evidence •Genetic threads

•SINEs (Alu )•LINEs•Retroviral insertions•pseudo genes (e.g. olefaction)•chromosomal inversions

•Phenotypal similarities•Fossils

Tapestry arguments in biology

For some physicists, mathematicians and engineers -- these arguments may still seem foreign and vague; It doesn’t “smell” like the scientific method they are familiar with-- for example: where is the repeatability? What is the predictive power of these arguments? Where are the numbers?

For some physicists, mathematicians and engineers -- these arguments may still seem foreign and vague; It doesn’t “smell” like the scientific method they are familiar with-- for example: where is the repeatability? What is the predictive power of these arguments? Where are the numbers?

•The tapestry for: do humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor? seems to most biologists to be unbreakably strong

•The tapestry for: do humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor? seems to most biologists to be unbreakably strong

TERUGBLIK:•Tapijt argumenten

•Vaak moeilijk voor een leek om goed in te schatten•Verschillen van discipline tot discipline

•Biologen (ook Christelijke) geloven in de evolutie (type 1 & 2) omdat tapijt argumenten daarvoor sterk zijn.

•Er blijven uiteraard nog veel vragen over details.

TERUGBLIK:•Tapijt argumenten

•Vaak moeilijk voor een leek om goed in te schatten•Verschillen van discipline tot discipline

•Biologen (ook Christelijke) geloven in de evolutie (type 1 & 2) omdat tapijt argumenten daarvoor sterk zijn.

•Er blijven uiteraard nog veel vragen over details.

VOLGENDE VRAAG:Hoe zit het dan met de Bijbel en Genesis 1&2

VOLGENDE VRAAG:Hoe zit het dan met de Bijbel en Genesis 1&2

Newton en de planeten• De planeet banen

zijn onstabiel: God “hervormd” ze

• Sir Isaac Newton

Leibnitz werpt tegen“als God de gebreken van zijn schepping moest herstellen, dit zeker afbreuk zou doen aan zijn ambachtelijke vaardigheid”

•John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion, CUP 1991, p147

•“En ik houd vol dat God, als hij wonderen verricht, dat niet doet om in de behoeften van de natuur te voorzien, maar in die van de genade. En wie anders denkt moet noodzakelijk een lage dunk hebben van de wijsheid en macht van God”

•-- geen God van de gaten!

Leibnitz werpt tegen

God van de gaten?

• We begrijpen iets niet --> God in het gat van onze kennis• “When we come to the scientifically unknown, our correct policy is not to rejoice because we have found God; it is to become better scientists”

• Prof. Charles Coulson, Oxford U

Meer Intermezzo’s?

o Bijbelse taalo “jaagt God voor de Leeuwen? (Job 38, Ps 104)?o Secondaire en Primaire oorzakeno Natuurwetten beschrijven het “gewone

handelen” van God?

o Denkpatronen over wetenschap en geloofo Nietsandersdanismeo Mechanisme en betekeniso Wetenschapismeo God van de gaten

o Bijbelse taalo “jaagt God voor de Leeuwen? (Job 38, Ps 104)?o Secondaire en Primaire oorzakeno Natuurwetten beschrijven het “gewone

handelen” van God?

o Denkpatronen over wetenschap en geloofo Nietsandersdanismeo Mechanisme en betekeniso Wetenschapismeo God van de gaten

Dawkins en atheisme van de gaten?

• "The individual organism ... is not

fundamental to life, but something that emerges when genes, which at the beginning of evolution were separate, warring entities, gang together in co-operative groups as "selfish co-operators". The individual organism is not exactly an illusion. It is too concrete for that. But it is a secondary, derived phenomenon, cobbled together as a consequence of the actions of fundamentally separate, even warring agents.

• From Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow, (Penguin, London, 1998) p 308.

Prof. Richard Dawkins (Oxford)

Gene language[Genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence.

[Genes] are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy that we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence.

Denis Noble -- The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome (OUP 2006)

Richard Dawkins --

The Selfish Gene (1976)

Natuurgeschiedenis

• EMOTIONEEL DEBAT ? Determineert waar we vandaan komen wie we zijn en hoe we zouden moeten leven?

• EMOTIONEEL DEBAT ? Determineert waar we vandaan komen wie we zijn en hoe we zouden moeten leven?

Intermezzo: het woord Evolutie1) Evolutie as Natuurgeschiedenis

•De aarde is oud(+/- 4.5 Billion years)•Complexere levensvormen volgen op simplere levensvormen

2) Evolutie as a mechanisme voor biologische complexiteit•Mutaties en natuurlijke selectie(note: Christenen zijn het er over eens dat God dit geschapen heeft)micorevolutie, immuunsysteem etc…

3) Evolutie als wereldbeeld (evolutionisme)George Gaylord Simpson: "De mens is het resultaat van een doelloos en natuurlijk proces

dat hem niet heeft bedoeld. Hij is niet gepland. of Richard Dawkins:"Darwin maakt het mogelijk om intellectueel vervulde atheist te

zijn.”Zie ook Bas Haring, Midas Dekkers, etc..

Metaforen: Toeval of Stochastisch?

• Random mutations and natural selection...

• Stochastic (Monte Carlo) optimisation• e.g. used to price your stock

portfolio .....

Lego blocks or clay?

• Evo-Devo Lego Blocks:• pax6• sonic-hedgehog• shaven-baby• tinman

• Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the

Animal Kingdom. S.B. Carroll (Blackwell Science 2005)

Why so few genes?

C. elegans (19,500) & P. pacificus (29,000)

Drosophila Melanogaster

(13,500)

E.coli (5416)Mycoplasma genitalium (483)

(300 minimum?)

H. sapiens (23,000)

S. cerevisiae (5800)

Why so few genes?We share 15% of our genes with E. coli

“ “ 25% “ “ “ “ yeast

“ “ 50% “ “ “ “ flies

“ “ 70% “ “ “ “ frogs

“ “ 98% “ “ “ “ chimps

what makes us different?

Gene language

Why are there so few genes?

complexity comes from the interactions

gene networks

systems biology

transcriptional network for yeast: Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Gene language

[Genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence.

Richard Dawkins --The Selfish Gene (1976)

[Genes] are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy that we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence.

Denis Noble -- The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome (OUP 2006)

Contingency v.s.``deep structures’’: Re-run the tape of evolution?

“Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.” In evolution, there is no direction, no progression. Humanity is dethroned from its exalted view of its own importance

S.J. Gould: “Wonderful Life”; (W.W. Norton 1989)

When you examine the tapestry of evolution you see the same patterns emerging over and over again. Gould's idea of rerunning the tape of life is not hypothetical; it's happening all around us. And the result is well known to biologists — evolutionary convergence. When convergence is the rule, you can rerun the tape of life as often as you like and the outcome will be much the same. Convergence means that life is not only predictable at a basic level; it also has a direction.Simon Conway Morris “Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe”; (CUP, 2003)

Convergent Evolution?

Convergent evolution in mechanical design of lamnid sharks and tunasJeanine M. Donley, et al. Nature 429, 61-65 (6 May 2004)

"For the harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty." (On Growth and Form, 1917.)

Convergent EvolutionNorth America:Placental Sabre-toothed cat

South America”Marsupial Sabre-toothed cat

Convergent Evolutioncompound eye camera eye

Convergent Evolution?

• Enormous number of examples ... from proteins to vision up to societies to intelligence.

• Are rational conscious beings an inevitable outcome? “

The principal aim of this book has been to show that the constraints of evolution and the ubiquity of convergence make the emergence of something like ourselves a near-inevitability. SCM, “Life’s Solution”, (CUP 2005) pp328

TERUGBLIK:•Metaforen zijn belangrijk

•“toeval –v.s. kansprocess”•“genen taal etc..

•Er is nog veel te ondekken•Atheisme van de gaten?

TERUGBLIK:•Metaforen zijn belangrijk

•“toeval –v.s. kansprocess”•“genen taal etc..

•Er is nog veel te ondekken•Atheisme van de gaten?

VOLGENDE VRAAG:Waarom de sterke consensus onder biologen dat de evolutie waar is?

VOLGENDE VRAAG:Waarom de sterke consensus onder biologen dat de evolutie waar is?

Tapijt argumentenWetenschap als een “tapijt” --de kracht ligt niet aan één enkele draad maar aan het geheel en hoe ze zijn zamengewoven.

Je kunt aan een paar draadtjes trekken, maar daardoor breek je het tapijt niet.

.

The Golemization of Relativity, David Mermin, Physics Today 49, p11 April 1996

Wonderlijke toepasselijkheid van de taal van de wiskunde

+Schrödinger equation (Quantum Mechanics)

Energy-Momentum (Special Relativity)

= Dirac Equation (1928)

Electrons

Positrons (antimatter) discovered 1932

Quantum Mechanics + Relativity = Antimatter

See also: “The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem”, Mark Steiner HUP (1998);

"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960), Eugene Wigner

Wetenschap en Schoonheid

A Scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.

Henri Poincaré 1854 – 1912

Tapijt argument: een oude aarde ?

Science is a tapestry -- you can pick at a few strings, but that doesn’t break the whole cloth

•Radiometric dating (many overlapping isotopes) •ice cores:up to 8000 years -- volcanoes like Vesuviusup to 740,000 years•Milankovitch cycles•Tree rings•All these methods (when used properly) agree. There is no scientific controversyhttp://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

Tapijt argument: een oude aarde ?

Milankovitch Cycles: here seen in 420,000 years of ice core data from Vostok, Antarctica research station.

Divergence of the chimpanzee and human lineages occurred about 6 million years ago; the times of lineage divergence are not to scale

News & Views: The chimpanzee and us, Wen-Hsiung Li and Matthew A. Saunders, Nature 437, 50-51 (1September 2005) .

Tapijt argument: gezamelijke afstamming Mens en Chimpanzee?

tapestry arguments in biology: chromosomal

banding:

The origin of man: a chromosomal pictorial legacy. J.J Yunis and O. Prakash, Science 215, 1525 (1982)

Humans have 46 (2 X 23) chromosomes

Apes have 48 (2 X 24) chromosomes

chromosome 2: Human, Chimp, Gorilla, Orang-utan

tapestry arguments in biology: fusion of chromosome 2?

chromosome 2: Human, Chimp, Gorilla, Orang-utan

tapestry arguments in biology: evidence from the human

genomeChromosome 2 is unique to the human lineage of evolution, having emerged as a result of head-to-head fusion of two acrocentric chromosomes that remained separate in other primates. The precise fusion site has been located in 2q13−2q14.1 (ref. 2; hg16:114455823−114455838), where our analysis confirmed the presence of multiple subtelomeric duplications to chromosomes 1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 19, 21 and 22 (Fig. 3; Supplementary Fig. 3a, region A). During the formation of human chromosome 2, one of the two centromeres became inactivated (2q21, which corresponds to the centromere from chimp chromosome 13) and the centromeric structure quickly deterioriated [42].

Generation and annotation of the DNA sequences of human chromosomes 2 and 4, L.W. Hillier et al., Nature 434, 724 (2005).

endogenous retroviruses

In humans endogenous retrovirus sequences make up about 1% of the genome.

Lebedev, Y. B., et al. (2000) "Differences in HERV-K LTR insertions in orthologous loci of humans and great apes." Gene 247: 265-277.

HERV-K insertions

tapestry arguments in biology: more threads of

evidence •Genetic threads

•SINEs (Alu )•LINEs•Retroviral insertions•pseudo genes (e.g. olefaction)•chromosomal inversions

•Phenotypal similarities•Fossils•The tapestry for: do humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor? seems to most biologists almost unbreakably strong

for physicists, mathematicians and engineers -- these arguments may still seem foreign and vague; where is the “proof”?, how do you know? -- so communities talk past each other

tapestry arguments in biology

“But others [biologists], I soon came to realize, regarded logical arguments as suspect. To them, experimental evidence, fallible as it might be, provided a far surer avenue to truth than did mathematical reasoning. .... Their implicit assumption seemed to be: How could one know one’s assumptions were correct? Where, in a purely deductive argument, was there room for the surprises that nature might offer, for mechanisms that might depart altogether from those imagined in our initial assumptions? Indeed for some biologists, the gap between empirical and logical necessity loomed so large as to make the latter seem effectively irrelevant.

•Evelyn Fox Keller, in “Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines, HUP, (2002)

You can’t ask those kinds of questions!!!!(Biologist to AAL at “Protein-Protein Interaction Conf”, June 2004)

“Where are the equations” -- a physicist might ask

Tapestry arguments• Basic scientific principles are shared across fields• But what is considered “necessary” or “sufficient”

for a (self-organised) tapestry varies from field to field (often unwritten) • cultural iceberg, above and below waterline• evidence: grant or paper review• demarkation problems

• mathematics->physics->chemistry->biology->medicine->engineering

• Differences --in spite of apparent epistemic laxity ... it still works!

• Christian evaluation needs communities of scholars

TERUGBLIK:•Tapijt argumenten

•Vaak moeilijk voor een leek om goed in te schatten•Verschillen van discipline tot discipline

•Biologen (ook Christelijke) geloven in de evolutie (type 1 & 2) omdat tapijt argumenten daarvoor sterk zijn.

•Er blijven uiteraard nog veel vragen over details.

TERUGBLIK:•Tapijt argumenten

•Vaak moeilijk voor een leek om goed in te schatten•Verschillen van discipline tot discipline

•Biologen (ook Christelijke) geloven in de evolutie (type 1 & 2) omdat tapijt argumenten daarvoor sterk zijn.

•Er blijven uiteraard nog veel vragen over details.

VOLGENDE VRAAG:Hoe zit het dan met de Bijbel en Genesis 1&2

VOLGENDE VRAAG:Hoe zit het dan met de Bijbel en Genesis 1&2

Bijbels of cultureel?

Wat is de genre?• Genesis 1-2:3• Phrases that occur 10 times:

• 10 times “God said” (3 for mankind, 7 for other creatures)

• 10 times creative commands (3 x “let there be” for heavenly creatures, 7 x “let” for world below)

• 10 x To make• 10 x According to their

kind• Phrases that occur 7 times

(heptads)• “and it was so”• “and God saw that it was

good”

• Genesis 1:2-3• Phrases that occur 3 times

• God blessed• God created• God created men and

women• Other numerical patterns:

• Intro 1:1-2 contains 21 words (3 x 7) and conclusion (2: 1-3) contains 35 words (5 X 7)

• Earth is mentioned 21 times and “God” 35 times

• -- see e.g. H. Blocher “In the Beginning”, p 33 or E. Lucas “Can We Believe Genesis Today” , p 97

Wat is de genre?

SHAPED• Day 1

• The separation of light and darkness

• Day 2• The separation of the

waters to form the sky and the sea

• Day 3• The separation of the

sea from dry land and creation of plants

INHABITED• Day 4

• The creation of the lights to rule the day and the night

• Day 5• The creation of the

birds and fish to fill the sky and sea

• Day 6• The creation of the

animals and humans to fill the land and eat the plants

Day 7: The heavens and earth were finished and God rested

FRAMEWORK VIEW

Wat is de genre?• Gen2:4-7 -- more patterns:• These are the generations

a. of the heavens b. and the earth c. when they were created d. in the day that the Lord God made e. the earth f. and the heavens.

• Chiastic structure (C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4 P&R (2006))

When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

• A completely different emphasis!

Wat is de genre?• More like Revelation than like Luke• But very clear in its teaching e.g.

• God created the world• Creation is good

• I Tim 4: 1The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 2 Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. 3 They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. 4 For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

Wat is de genre?• More like Revelation than like Luke?• But very clear in its teaching e.g.

• God created the world• Creation is good • Man is made in God’s image• Mankind (adam) has fallen into sin• A promise of redemption (seed of woman)• MANY! More things• No problems with perspecuity on doctrine

Wat is de genre?

• Is it chronological?• "Now what man of intelligence will believe that

the first and the second and the third day … existed without the sun and moon and stars?” • Origen 185 - 254: First Principles, 4.3

• “On this subject there are three main views. According to the first, some wish to understand paradise only in a material way. According to the second, others wish to take it only in a spiritual way. According to the third, others understand it both ways, taking some things materially and others spiritually. If I may briefly mention my own opinion, I prefer the third”• Augustine of Hippo (354-430) De Gen. ad litt VIII,

1. (on the literal interpretation of Genesis)

Jewish Commentators• “…the sages agree that the creation of this earth and sky

was a single divine event and not a series of distinct occurrences spread out over six or seven days• N.M. Samuelson, “Judaism and the Doctrine of

Creation”, CUP (1994) p115• “The text does not point to the order of the [acts] of

creation … the text does not by any means teach which things were created first and which later [it only] wants to teach us what was the condition of things at the time when heaven and earth were created, namely, that the earth was without form and a confused mass”

• Rashi (1040-1105), “Commentary on Genesis”• Many more examples, e.g. Maimonides (1135-1204)

etc…

Wat is de genre?• Strong internal hints at “elevated prose”, more

like Revelation than like Luke• Two separate narratives (tablets)• Numerical patterns• Thematic patterns• A common understanding of church fathers, early

Jewish commentators and early Evangelical leaders.

• Main theological teachings are crystal clear (perspicuity)

• Physical interpretation less so -- there science can take a “servant role” and help you decide.

• We must be very careful not to import our own cultural biases into interpretation

Bijbel en Wetenschap

• De wetenschap: een knechtenrol voor Bijbel interpretatie

“The Bible must not be placed under any other authority! …no authority, even one at the apex of the scientific world, may impose his authority on the Bible in order to dictate how it is to be understood, even with the best intentions.”“Instead of an authority, however, a ministerial, servant-role apears possible. ….. The knowledge derived from the observation of reality (`science’) would help us to understand the language of the Bible better.” •Henri Blocher “In the Beginning” IVP (1984) p 25

Aside:Emergence of Humans?

Advice from C.S. Lewis

When the author of Genesis says that God made man in His own image, he may have pictured a vaguely corporeal God making man as a child makes a figure out of plasticine. A modern Christian philosopher may think of the process lasting from the first creation of matter to the final appearance on this planet for an organism fit to receive spiritual as well as biological life. Both mean essentially the same thing. Both are denying the same thing -- the doctrine that matter by some blind power inherent in itself has produced spirituality. (C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock Eerdmans (1970), p 46)

e.g. at what age is a child spiritually responsible to God?John Stott on “Homos Divinus”

Advice from Billy Graham "I don't think that there's any conflict at all between

science today and the Scriptures. I think that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures many times and we've tried to make the Scriptures say things they weren't meant to say, I think that we have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and of course I accept the Creation story. I believe that God did create the universe. I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process and at a certain point He took this person or being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact that God did create man. ... whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man's relationship to God.”

• - Billy Graham quoted by David Frost• Source: Book - Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man

(1997, p. 72-74)

SamenvattingComplexe materie!

Evolutie als 1. Natuurgeschiedenis2. Mechanisme om biologische complexiteit te maken3. Wereldbeeld (evolutionisme)

Metaforen zijn belangrijk Mechanismen van evolutie kunnen mooi zijn

Tapijt argumenten en de consensus onder wetenschappers omtrent Evolutie 1&2

Bijbel interpretatie – belangrijk om goed naar genre te kijken.

Complexe materie!

Evolutie als 1. Natuurgeschiedenis2. Mechanisme om biologische complexiteit te maken3. Wereldbeeld (evolutionisme)

Metaforen zijn belangrijk Mechanismen van evolutie kunnen mooi zijn

Tapijt argumenten en de consensus onder wetenschappers omtrent Evolutie 1&2

Bijbel interpretatie – belangrijk om goed naar genre te kijken.

Writers of “the Fundamentals”

• One of the original “Fundamentalists”• There is not a word in the Bible to indicate that

in its view death entered the animal world as a consequence of the Sin of man.

• When you say there is the “six days” and the question whether those days are meant to be measured by the twenty-four hours of the sun’s revolution around the earth -- I speak of these things popularly. It is difficult to see how they should be so measured when the sun that is to measure them is not introduced until the fourth day. Do not think that this larger reading of the days is a new speculation. You find Augustine in early times declaring that it is hard or altogether impossible to say what fashion these days are, and Thomas Aquinas, in the middle ages, leaving the matter an open question.

James Orr1844-1913

The Bible and Science

The lesson of Galileo, …, should remind us that careful observation of the natural world can cause us to go back to Scripture and reexamine whether Scripture actually teaches what we think it teaches. Sometimes, on closer examination of the text, we may find that our previous interpretations were incorrect.•Wayne Grudem, “Systematic Theology” IVP (1994) p 273

Wayne Grudem

The Bible is not a science textbook

• The whole point of scripture is to bring us to a knowledge of Christ --- and having come to know him (and all that this implies), we should come to a halt and not expect to learn more. Scripture provides us with spectacles through which we may view the world as God’s creation and self-expression; it does not, and was never intended, to provide us with an infallible repository of astronomical and medical information.

John Calvin1509-1564

Advice from Schaefer

• We must take ample time, and sometimes this will mean a long time, to consider whether the apparent clash between science and revelation means that the theory set forth by science is wrong or whether we must reconsider what we thought the Bible says.

• Francis Schaefer

Francis Schaefer1912-1984

Warfield on evolution

• B. B. Warfield (1851-1921). A biblical inerrantist as evolutionist. Livingstone DN, Noll MA, 1: Isis. 2000 Jun;91(2):283-304.

• The theological doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the intellectual basis for modern creation science. Yet Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary, the theologian who more than any other defined modern biblical inerrancy, was throughout his life open to the possibility of evolution and at some points an advocate of the theory. Throughout a long career Warfield published a number of major papers on these subjects, including studies of Darwin's religious life, on the theological importance of the age of humanity (none) and the unity of the human species (much), and on Calvin's understanding of creation as proto-evolutionary. He also was an engaged reviewer of many of his era's important books by scientists, theologians, and historians who wrote on scientific research in relation to traditional Christianity. Exploration of Warfield's writing on science generally and evolution in particular retrieves for historical consideration an important defender of mediating positions in the supposed war between science and religion.

B.B. Warfield1851-1921

God openbaart zich door de natuurPsalm 19:De hemel verhaalt van Gods majesteit, Het uitspansel roemt het werk van zijn

handen

Melkweg: 100 miljard sterren

Universum: 100 miljard sterrensteden

”God maakte … ook de sterren" .. Gen 1:16

Intelligent Design (capitalised)

some key publications and people•The Mystery of Life’s Origin (1984)

•Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, Roger L. Olsen•Evolution, a Theory in Crisis (1986)

•Michael Denton•Darwin on Trial (1991)

•Philip Johnson•Darwin’s Black Box (1996)

•Michael Behe (CT book of the year)•Icons of evolution (2000)

•Jonathan Wells•No Free Lunch (2001)

•William Dembski

heterogeneous movement -- will focus on ID centred at Discovery Institute

What is ID• Intelligent agency, as an aspect of scientific theory making,

has more explanatory power in accounting for the specified, and sometimes irreducible complexity of some physical systems, including biological entities, and/or the existence of the universe as a whole, than the blind forces of. . . matter.’[1] That is, intelligent design is a better explanation for entities exhibiting complex specified information (CSI) than are appeals to the inherent capacities of nature (i.e. chance and/or physical necessity). ID suggests that the world contains objects that exhaust the explanatory resources of undirected natural causes, and can only be adequately explained by recourse to intelligent causation.

• (definition from Peter S. Williams)

Irreducible Complexity

This result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science ... The discovery [of intelligent design] rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schroedinger, Pasteur and Darwin.”

•Bacterial flagellum, immune system, etc... are too complex to have evolved

Michael Behe (1996)

Complex Specified Information

• CSI -- information that could not have come there by chance alone?

• e.g. when we see a statue v.s. weathered rock• “Law of the conservation of information”

William Dembski

Intelligent Design

• Philosophical issues:• Definition of science (demarcation) ?• Problems, but why not follow the

evidence?

• Theological issues:• when/why does God intervene?• miracles?• Newman/Barth critique

ID and Christians

• Major issues is -- why these miracles?

“And I hold, that when God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God” Leibnitz

e.g. what is the Biblical rationale for supernatural action aiding the creation of the flagellum?

•Miracles occur to serve God’s redemptive purpose•Origin, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin etc...

Intelligent Design (capitalised)

•GOOD• Looking at complex questions in science/philosophy• counteracting evolutionism• middle road, broad church?

•LESS GOOD

• Detached from scripture• doesn’t solve some pressing questions (like death before

fall)• very political

• http://www.discovery.org• William Dembski, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, Paul

Nelson

Calvin on using science• As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that Galileo had any direct knowledge of Calvin's writings.

Nevertheless his understanding of the nature of the language used by the Bible when referring to the natural world is the same as Calvin's as the following quotations from the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina show.

• B1. These propositions set down by the Holy Ghost were set down in that manner by the sacred scribes in order to accommodate them to the capacities of the common people, who are rude and unlearned. (p. 181)

• B2. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned. (p. 182)

• B3. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense-experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. (p. 182f)

• B4. ...having arrived at any certainties in physics, we ought to utilize these as the most appropriate aids in the true exposition of the Bible and in the investigation of those meanings which are necessarily contained therein, for these must be concordant with demonstrated truths. (p. 183)

• The first two quotations express the same 'accommodation' understanding of biblical language as Calvin adopted. The third recognises that, as a result of this, the literal sense of the biblical text may sometimes be at variance with the scientific understanding of the natural phenomenon described. In the final quotation Galileo makes the point made by Prof. McKay that one reason why biblical interpreters should take scientific knowledge into account is that it will help them to recognise when the biblical writers are using the language of appearance or cultural idioms, and so help them avoid the kind of misinterpretation made by those who condemned Galileo.

lehttp://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/cis/lucas/lecture.html