I think humans have to be very careful in their future endeavors. I love knowledge, don’t get me wrong; but sometimes I think that we’re going to destroy ourselves in our ever relentless pursuit of knowledge.

By examining the observations within our own world and our universe, we put together all these rules and theorems that seem to explain everything, and yet, we don’t really know. If science has shown us anything over the last couple centuries, it’s that even when we think we know things; most often we’re not entirely correct, and sometimes we are completely wrong.

What would happen if in the process of terraforming mars we change some dynamic about mars that causes it to become unstable, how might that impact earth? What would happen if while testing options for terraforming mars on the moon we cause the moon to become unstable, how would that impact earth?

Even science understands the vast improbability (in non-scientific terms ‘the miracle’) of the universe producing the earth so finely tuned for biological existence as we know it; I have to admit that I’m a bit concerned that in our desire for knowledge, we are going to cause a catastrophe that will be beyond our control and our technology to suppress.

On the other hand, the curiosity in me says that I think it’s interesting that we’re starting to examine moving outwards into the solar system; according to the Physicist Frank Tipler in his book The Physics of Christianity this is an inevitable goal of mankind, and necessary for survival.

In my mind, it is entirely possible to create manmade structures like a ‘bio dome’ to inhabit planets such as mars; however, I find it unlikely that we will ever change the atmosphere and temperature of mars in such a way that would allow humans to inhabit it as we do the earth today.

I do find it much more likely, as Tipler describes in his book previously referenced that through using principles defined in the Bekenstein Bound and the availability of future computer technologies based on Moore’s Law and the process of baryon-annihilation which he states will be developed in the future to provide an extremely efficient mass to energy conversion, humanity will become digital, and we shall find the ability to download ourselves into a digital framework and travel through interstellar space at the speed of light, at which point we can then live out our existence as a virtual process on a piece of hardware, not requiring any of the current biological necessities that the earth offers.

Sounds like the Wachowski brothers were closer than we imagine! J

 

 

The question of “What was before God” is interesting – although; the answer must be “Nothing”.

 

Whether god is, as to some, the atoms and molecules that make up existence, or god is the personal creator described in the Judeo-Christian doctrines. There is an old Latin saying that says “Ex nihilo nihil fit” which means roughly – if there was ever a time that there was nothing – there would still be nothing today (i.e. out of nothing, nothing comes).

 

The idea of God is that God is that which there is no greater. So if there is something before what we call god, then what we call god is not god, and its predecessor is in fact God (an adaptive form of the argument from ontology by Anselm of Canterbury).

 

Additionally there can’t be an infinite regress of causes (that is – there has to be a first cause) – and that first cause is what we call God (from Aquinas’ Quinque viae).

 

In my science courses at the University, I am always amazed, and delighted to see how discussions of science and humanity inevitably come back to discussions on God!

 

While there are very few limits of science in answering metaphysical questions, even science itself cannot answer some questions of science as was discovered in the early 1900s by Werner Heisenberg as a result of work done by Max Planck (Hawking, 1998).

 

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle led Heisenberg, and others, to create a new theory based on the uncertainty of the ability to make predictions about packets of light called quanta, resulting in a new theory called Quantum Mechanics (Hawking, 1998).

 

The result of this fundamental law of uncertainty means that, not only will science fail to make accurate simultaneous measurements of the speed and position of quanta, but science will never be able to make accurate measurements of the future. So while the future may itself be deterministic, science will never be able to determine it (Tipler, 2007).

 

Like the future, the question of the origins of the life will definitely be challenging if not impossible for science to answer. How can one test in a reproducible fashion, the state in which the early universe was in leading up to the evolution of life, without being able to accurately reproduce that state?

 

One of the hallmarks of scientific learning is to be able to test in a reproducible fashion a theory that has been devised. I don’t ever see humanity recreating the Big Bang without a consequent of the unintentional annihilation of humanity (we’ll see what the LHC produces over the next few years!).

 

I also don’t think science is equipped to answer existential questions, like “Why am I here”, “What is my purpose”, “Where am I going”.

 

So, while science may continue to build on the hypothesis of the origin of life, I find it unlikely that we will ever be able to reproduce the initial creation of life, nor answer the questions of the meaning and purpose of life. Those answers are beyond the limits of science.

 

Of course, if Heisenberg taught me anything, it’s that the future is uncertain from a human standpoint – so who knows for sure!

 

References

Hawking, S. (1998). A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam Books.

Tipler, F. J. (2007). The Physics of Christianity. New York: Doubleday.