Swiftcurrent Lake, Glacier National Park
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
My wife and I were really pleased, yesterday, to spot two black bears \u2014 though neither of them was actually black \u2014 in relatively quick succession along Alberta Highway 6 from Waterton Lakes to the Chief Mountain Border Crossing. \u00a0I think that brings our total for the trip to six. \u00a0Four separate sightings of black bears, plus a mama grizzly and her cub.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I published the article below in the Deseret News<\/em> on 27 February 2014:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sir John Polkinghorne, the eminent British theoretical physicist-turned-Anglican priest, has a favorite example of what is often called the \u201cfine-tuning\u201d of the cosmos for life.<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s currently thought that there\u2019s a sort of energy that\u2019s driving the expansion of the universe and that\u2019s linked, simply, with space itself. The most common term for it is \u201cdark energy.\u201d (Formerly, it was termed the \u201ccosmological constant.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\nThe strength of this \u201cdark energy\u201d has recently been measured, and it turns out to be much less than what physicists would have predicted it to be. If the data are accurate, the measured value of the dark energy observed by scientists is 10 to the minus 120 times the value that would naturally be expected. In order to represent that figure as a fraction, you would need to write a numerator of one above a denominator of one followed by 120 zeros. (Try writing it out!)<\/span><\/p>\nThat is, in fact, an astoundingly small fraction. To put it in perspective, the number of atoms in the entire observable universe is estimated to be somewhere between 10 to the 78th and 10 to the 82nd power \u2014 that is, between one followed by 78 zeros and one followed by 82 zeros.<\/span><\/p>\nIf the number were any larger, remarks Polkinghorne, life would be impossible.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd this is just one of a rather large ensemble of numbers that appear, according to contemporary science, to have been precisely fine-tuned to allow for galaxies, stars and life.<\/span><\/p>\nHow can such things be explained? One obvious way is to see them as indicators of deliberate, intelligent purpose undergirding the universe. On this reading, they point to some sort of powerful mind \u2014 or, in other words, to what most people worldwide would call \u201cGod.\u201d Polkinghorne is not alone among scientists and philosophers in leaning toward such an understanding.<\/span><\/p>\nAnother way to explain them is to say that there are many universes, perhaps an infinite or virtually infinite number of them, within an overall \u201cmultiverse,\u201d and that we just happen to have lucked out. If our particular universe weren\u2019t as it is, we wouldn\u2019t be here to notice it.<\/span><\/p>\nUnfortunately, though, essentially by definition, it\u2019s difficult \u2014 if not impossible \u2014 to think of a way of ever knowing about such alternate universes, if they really exist. And it\u2019s somewhat amusing to listen as people who disdain faith in an unobserved and unprovable God take refuge, when confronted with the possible religious implications of \u201cfine-tuning,\u201d in the concept of unobserved and unprovable other universes.<\/span><\/p>\nA third way of reacting to these new discoveries is simply to accept that that\u2019s just the way the universe is, a brute fact not to be questioned, and to focus on other things. But that seems a curiously unscientific response.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Canadian philosopher John Andrew Leslie has created a parable to help us think about this question:<\/span><\/p>\nSuppose that you\u2019re about to be executed. Ten skilled marksmen armed with rifles are lined up a few feet away; you\u2019re blindfolded and placed against a wall. You hear the officer say \u201cFire!\u201d and the rifles roar. However, to your surprise and relief, you\u2019re still alive. Untouched, even.<\/span><\/p>\nHow do you react?<\/span><\/p>\nDo you simply respond that, well, that\u2019s the way it is, and then walk away without any questions? Such a reaction would be remarkably incurious, even extremely strange.<\/span><\/p>\nAlternatively, you might reason that even the best riflemen sometimes miss and that, if enough executions happen, there must surely be one, somewhere, sometime, in which all 10 members of the firing squad completely miss their target at close range. You simply happen to be the lucky one. Question disposed of. Move along. There\u2019s nothing more to see.<\/span><\/p>\nHowever, Polkinghorne, with many others, finds a third hypothetical response most reasonable. \u201cMaybe,\u201d summarizes Polkinghorne, \u201cthere is only one execution scheduled for today, namely yours, but more was going on in that event than you are aware of. The marksmen are on your side, and they missed by design.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAnd so it is, he believes, with the universe as a whole.<\/span><\/p>\nSir John Polkinghorne has written prolifically on science and religion. A brief and accessible introduction to his thinking can be found in the remarkable volume of essays edited by Eric Metaxas under the title of \u201cSocrates in the City,\u201d or, in its paperback edition, \u201cLife, God, and Other Small Topics<\/a>\u201d (Dutton, $17). I recommend the entire book enthusiastically.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Columbia Falls, Montana<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 My wife and I were really pleased, yesterday, to spot two black bears \u2014 though neither of them was actually black \u2014 in relatively quick succession along Alberta Highway 6 from Waterton Lakes to the Chief Mountain Border Crossing. \u00a0I think that brings our total for the trip to six. \u00a0Four separate sightings […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Glacier](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/02\/swiftcurrent_lake_and_mount_wilbur.jpg\")
<\/a>