Why Does Physical Reality Terminate In
Man?
IN THE PRECEDING CHAPTER we noted how optimum designs exist to perform specified tasks under different physical constraints. As a result of this we also saw how certain physical functions between man and animals are performed by structures common to both animal and human bodies. When we reflect on the common functions, we realize that each of them is merely part of a list of things that are necessary for animals to survive.
We also recognized three purposes animals serve and noted that in each case, what they do is related to and necessary for the survival of human life. But do people have a purpose? If we came into existence through a cosmic accident, the answer is no; but if man is the creation of Deity, the answer is yes.
Do People Have a Purpose?
Many people today believe that life's only purpose is to have fun and games. This school of thought teaches that we should eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we are going to die. That will be the end of it. They say that after death there is nothing, so we should enjoy ourselves while we can. "Look out for Number One, because no one else will. Do your thing, and do it while you can; because once you die, that's it." They believe that once you're dead and buried, you are gone forever.
Many go even further. They say life has no purpose at all; it's only a freak occurrence in which we just happen to have been caught. They go on to say that all there is is nothing; everything is just an illusion. But an interesting thing happens here. Such people, despite the beliefs they profess, nonetheless continue to eat and drink as though there were something. In other words, they continue to satisfy their appetites.
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But how can people who deny that life has a purpose be truly merry? Their belief leaves them nothing to be merry about. As they approach the autumn of their life, the effort to live increases to a point of diminishing return, and eventually their life style exemplifies the living dead. But this is not true of those who have hope beyond the grave. For them, death to this world is synonymous with birth into a new world.
When a baby is born into this world, it enters the space and sunlight of a new existence while simultaneously dying to the crowded dark womb it knew for nine months. Can the same be true of physical death in this world? Do robin redbreasts and starlit skies reveal the handiwork of an eternal Intelligence who paints green pastures and majestic sunsets? Or is each newness of spring and color of autumn the result of one fortunate happenstance that created snow-laden forests and butterflies on flowers as part of the happy accident? Beliefs are the root from which sorrow and joy grow. And facts rather than philosophy ought to be the nuggets that help us decide what is true.
Is there something with respect to the presence of man on planet earth that transcends anything we have thus far considered? Can it be that human life has within its fabric a distinctive imprint that goes beyond the physical existence to which animals are in bondage? If we are to answer that kind of question, it is necessary to step back and see things from a broader perspective. We need to apprise the physical world from a reference point that allows its entire structure to come into our view. In the same way that we know of the sun's presence at night by the light reflected from the moon, in like fashion we will see that man reflects the presence of a divine image that is not directly visible. By looking at the structure of the entire physical world, we will uncover the source of the light that sparks human life, and that fans human achievement.
Organizational Ascendancy
When we examine the construction of physical creation, one thing jumps out at us in terms of a universal rule. It's a law that applies to atoms, living cells, and even galaxies. In order for us to uncover this law, let's use particle physics1 to identify a family of tiny things in the universe called fermions. These are held, so it's said, by gluelike particles known as bosons. The fermions come in two varieties, one known as quarks and the other called leptons. Likewise the bosons come in two kinds, the so-called massless particles and the very heavy particles. It's not important for us to be familiar with or understand how these particles behave or interact. What is important is that if we go to the basic constituents of the physical world we discover structure. When we examine the basic stuff of which the universe is composed, we find that even at the lowest levels, there seems to be organization.
When we study quarks,2 we find they come in six quantum flavors, and each flavor comes in three colors. Likewise, leptons come in three varieties. The most familiar particle to some of us is the electron. The other two are
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called the muon and the tau particles, and each of these three varieties comes with their very own neutrinos.3 At the most basic levels in the universe, we find both structure and organization. And when we look at organization, we observe something very significant with respect to human life.
Consider atoms. An atom can be pictured as nothing more than an ultra-miniature solar system. Its nucleus or center is analogous to our sun, and things called electrons are whirling around the center, moving more or less in circles, as the planets do about the sun. The nucleus is typically composed of particles called protons and neutrons which themselves seem to be made up of those quarks and leptons mentioned earlier.4
Small-Scale Organization
Now ask yourself, who needs whom in order to exist? It's clear that the protons and neutrons at the center of the atom certainly don't need the atom to exist. They can exist all by themselves in the form of particles. The same is true of the electrons whirling about the center of the atom. They can all exist by themselves; they don't need the atom to exist. But we observe that the atom, as an entity, exists by virtue of the organization of the particles that make it up. An atom depends for its existence upon the proton, the neutron, and the electron. The particular way in which these particles are organized brings an atom into existence. It's a one-way organizational street. In this sense, we can say that the particles function in a way that allows atoms to exist. And this one-way street exists throughout the entire physical creation!
Consider the next step up — what we call molecules. A water molecule is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. We can picture these as two small red marbles (the hydrogen atoms) and one large white marble. The hydrogen atoms don't need the water molecule to exist, any more than does the oxygen atom. In other words, the oxygen atom and the hydrogen atoms can exist by themselves, regardless of whether or not a water molecule exists, but the water molecule depends for its existence upon all three. This one-way dependence of molecules on atoms (and as we saw earlier atoms on particles) is true for all molecules, no matter what their substance. It stays like this all of the way up the organizational ladder. The so-called organic molecules depend for their existence on the organization of simpler inorganic molecules. Living cells depend for their existence on the organizational properties of organic molecules.
What's truly amazing is that no matter where we may choose to stop in this ascending hierarchy of organization, we find the universal rule that every level of organization depends for its existence on all of the organizationally simpler structures below it. But the structures of lesser organization do not depend for their existence upon those levels above them.
Consider something as familiar as simple plant life in the sea. It doesn't need fish to exist, but the fish need it for food. Go down one level and
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consider the sea water itself. Sea water doesn't need plant life to exist, but the aquatic plant life, such as algae, needs the sea water.
Human Termination
Throughout the entire physical world we find a one-way organizational street. The fancy word is anisotropy, and it permeates the entire physical creation, continuing through plant life on land and on into the insects that exist underground. The organizational complexity continues to grow from the insects and into the simple animals, and from them through the more and more complex life forms until it abruptly terminates with man himself. It ends with human life. Man is at the top of the ladder. Human life depends for its existence upon the organizational properties of everything below it, but no known thing depends for its existence upon man.
Years ago I used to challenge people with the following claim: "Show me any scientific law governing the physical universe, and then assume that it doesn't exist. The consequences of it will show that human life can't exist." In the organizational hierarchy of things, everything below man has an existence apart from human life. Man depends upon everything else for his existence, but there seems to be nothing else that depends upon man.
Of course, even within these one-way streets there are many complex interactions. For instance, the oxygen that animals consume is given off by plant life, and the carbon dioxide that plant life requires is given off by the animals. Isn't it remarkable that primates have an affinity for sugar, which in a typical fruit happens to surround the indigestible pit of the fruit? Moreover, the pit passes out through the primate with nutrients conducive to good plant growth. It also happens that the plants themselves are food for animals, and that their roots stabilize the primate's habitat by preventing erosion. These and other harmonies exist throughout the vast numbers of complex structures that we find on our planet.
Man is king of the mountain. Although we know of nothing that needs man to exist, it appears that man depends for his existence on everything organizationally below him. So total and complete is this dependence that if we were to open a physics or chemistry book and hypothetically deny the existence of any natural law, we would find that the ultimate consequence of this denial would be the destruction of man himself.
Genetic Uniqueness
If everything is constructed so that we can exist, the question is why? How is it that we find ourselves in a life-support system so delicately balanced that its internal harmonies perpetuate human consciousness through time? Where did the organizational code originate that enables us to breathe and eat and reproduce and think and, yes, make moral decisions? For what reason are we in a world under circumstances of need and desire and autonomous free will?
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You were conceived in a life-and-death race that ended when the fastest of 500 million sperm cells from your father's body reached an egg in your mother's womb. Is death the final outcome? Or was your birth the first of two in a master plan to deliver you to eternal life?
One thing is clear. Each level of complexity is organized in a way that calls into being the next higher level. This means that every organizational level within the world can be interpreted as having purpose in terms of the structural level just above it. But what's truly remarkable is that this organizational ascendancy of patterns abruptly stops with human life.
Man alone is distinguished by an abrupt discontinuity, a chasm he presents to the organizational hierarchy below him. The human body self-evinces its own uniqueness as being the most sophisticated known object within the entire physical creation. But why?
Man alone seems to carry within the fabric of his genetic makeup informational specifications higher than anything else known. I do not mean in terms of the number of chromosomes, or in terms of the length of genes or the magnitude of genetic material within the cells. Rather, I speak in terms of the organizational complexity specifiable in an observer's overall description of the particular sequence of nucleotide bases along his DNA. In the hierarchy of organizational ascendancy, the human body results from the most complex organizational specifications known to man. Where did this blueprint originate? Blind faith in unknown movements of historical chemical sequences won't do.5 Some have said that we were planted here by a supercivilization whose home is somewhere among the stars.6 Aside from there not being one shred of real evidence to support such an assertion, we might ask, "Where did they come from?"
Others prefer to say, "I don't know." That certainly seems more honest than pontificating that physical laws orchestrated a magic dance of lifeless particles into you and me. In this regard, all of us are free to worship whatever we wish, including warm little ponds, but we ought not confuse faith with science, particularly since there is a rational way to distinguish the two.
But does man have an attribute that separates him in absolute disunion from the animal world? Is there truly some distinctive that gives us the power to participate in a destiny inaccessible to animals, a destiny that offers the promise of eternity? If so, what is that imprint? What in man enables him to defeat the mightiest of jungle beasts despite the fact that he's physically inferior in size and strength? How is it that man looks into the cage at a zoo, and not the other way around? In short, what makes human life human?
We've already looked at the many common structures that exist in humans and in apes. Clearly it is not an anatomical or physiological difference that we seek, at least not on the surface.
If we can show an absolute disunion between human life and all other life forms on earth then the criterion for disunion can be used to identify
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the attribute responsible for human uniqueness. And once this attribute is found, we can use it to help us discover man's origin.
Sod vs. God
Were someone to attempt an overall description of a human body, its "description" by an observer would contain more information than the description of anything else in the entire universe. Furthermore, this information cannot be explained by asserting that material chaos produced it within a 30 billion light-year-wide universe that is 13 billion years old. Any attempt to understand the production of this information in terms of the physical properties of matter merely serves to push the origin of this information back to the time of the creation of the particles themselves. The evidence does teach that physical matter had a beginning.7 But, to believe that the living structure of a human body gradually arose from physical properties intrinsic to nonliving matter is to believe that natural processes engaged in the systematic production of information with the passage of time. This belief is contrary to the informational loss described by the New Generalized Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Materialistic beliefs have one central thrust. They replace intelligence with randomness as the means of the production of information. This faith in physical matter sustains man as the highest authority. Were we to accept Intelligence as the source of the vast information that we have uncovered in living cells within the last twenty years or so, it would mean there exists an Authority who can dictate what man can and cannot do. Since our nature is to live without restraints, we are motivated to explain life's origin in a way that lays no claim on our behavior, and that allows us to freely express our desires. To this end materialism elevates sod that can be trodden under foot, whereas theism illuminates a God who challenges us into submission.
Chapter Sixteen || Table of Contents
1. Hawking S. & Rocek M. ed. Superspace and Supergravity (1979) Cambridge Univ. Press.
2. Robinson A. Science (1979) 205:777 Aug 24; (1981) 211:1028 Mar. 6. Schechter B. Discover (1981) :27 Jul.
3. Robinson A. Science (1980) 208:697 May 16. Reines F. Am. Physi. Soc. Meeting (1980) Washington, DC Jul; Univ. Calif. (Irvine). Boehm F. Am Phys. Soc. Meeting (1983) Baltimore, MD. Jul; Calif. Inst. Tech.
4. Davies P. The Sciences (1982) :15 Jan.
5. Hoyle. F. Evolution From Space (1981) Enslow Publishers.
6. Crick F. Life Itself (1982) Simon & Schuster.
7. Schramm D. Physics Today (1983) :27 Apr.
