​All the information required for the development and second-by-second life of all organisms is encoded just in the four bases of DNA, the specific information coming from the order and the number of bases in subsections of DNA molecules that we call genes. Further – and this fact still fills me with amazement – all living organisms on Earth read the code in the same way. Every living organism is related to every other, consistent with the idea that there was just one origin of life (abiogenesis) and all life-forms are derived from that common beginning. 

​Caption for image: In bacteria, the DNA molecules are circular and, in addition to their main DNA molecule, they often have mini-circles that carry just a few genes. We constructed artificial mini-circles by splicing different pieces of DNA together in order to study the interaction of a particular protein (see below) with particular structures in DNA. The interaction is seen here under an electron microscope. Image copyright © Sara Burton, John Bryant and Jack Van’t Hof.

​But there is more. The information in DNA must be passed on. Every new cell needs a faithful copy of the genetic information from its ‘parent’. This is where the famous ‘double helix’ comes in (if you are not sure what a helix is, think of a ‘spiral’ staircase. A spiral staircase is actually not a spiral but a helix). A molecule of DNA consists of two helices wound round each other and which are held together because of specific abilities of the bases to form pairs with each other. Using just the initials of the bases to indicate their names, A in one helix can only pair with T in the other; similarly, G can only pair with C. I’m sure you can see that this immediately provides the means of passing on the code faithfully. If the two helices separate, then each single helix directs the synthesis of a new partner helix. For example, a T in the pre-existing single helix dictates that there must be an A at that position in the new helix. The structure of DNA means that it can direct its own faithful copying. That is both awesome and beautiful in its simplicity. If a human engineer had come up with this, we would say that he or she was a genius. As a Christian I say that the genius here is God.

In her book, Dirckx dismantles the philosophy of hard determinism in a beautifully concise section of her book (3) by asking three questions – is it internally consistent?, does it have explanatory power? and can it be lived? I do not wish to repeat her arguments here but just give a summary, with an emphasis on her third question.
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If I lived as a cause-and-effect machine, then any personally held belief is undermined – and this includes a belief in hard determinism itself, of course! Rather my precious conviction would just be the inevitable consequence of my neurons firing.  If a determinist says we don’t have free will, and requests that I evaluate the proposition, I am unable to do this freely in the absence of free will. Effectively I would have no rationality – I would not be able to choose freely between concepts. Similarly, if you can’t make a free decision then there are other important consequences. I would effectively have no creativity, as I would be unable to choose freely between creative ideas. I would have no ability to love, as I would be unable to choose freely whether to embrace someone in that way. Perhaps the most significant issue is that I would have no personal culpability. In contemporary society, we are all considered to have moral responsibility, and are therefore accountable for our actions – I have a choice whether to do right or wrong. If this is not so then hard determinism threatens to unravel the cornerstone of moral responsibility and the need for justice. In other words, if you use the consequence of determinism as a defence in a court of law, the judge would most likely tell you, in no uncertain terms, to go away and rethink.

The scientific basis for saying that we do not have real freedom to make choices is the idea that the laws of physics allow us to predict the future based on knowledge of the current initial conditions. In other words, if we have knowledge of the current state of all the particles in your brain, then the laws lead us to a uniquely defined future state, therefore making freedom of choice an impossibility. However, this argument disregards the fact that physics is not yet complete. In fact, all of our laws of science – the mathematics we write down to make such predictions – are very much approximations to the reality, which is governed by the powerful agencies that enact what we call the laws of nature. For more detail, see the discussion in Chapter 2 of the book (4). Also, to make such claims when the path from fundamental physics to understanding mind and consciousness is completely uncharted, is, to me, the height of scientific hubris.

Dirckx’s argument takes the discussion in the opposite direction, based upon the consequences if hard determinism reigns.  Either way, the bottom line is that we live in a manner in which the decisions we make mean something and these are made by volitional people, and not by cause-and-effect machines.

(1)   Sharon Dirckx, Am I just my brain?, The Good Book Company, 2020
(2)  The Holy Bible, Luke's Gospel, Chapter 11, verse 9 (NIV)
(3)  Reference (1), pp 85-88.
(4) Graham Swinerd and John Bryant, From the Big Bang to Biology - where is God?, Kindle Direct Publishing, 2020, Section 2.4

Graham Swinerd

Southampton
August 2021

​As Graham discussed in Part 2 of this series of posts, astronomers have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars; indeed, the number of new discoveries of exoplanets, as they are called, continues to grow on a daily basis. Many of these are located in the habitable zone of their sun, which spurs inevitable speculation about whether intelligent alien life resides there. However, this does not just depend upon the number of suitable planets but also upon the likelihood that life will occur given suitable conditions. The latter question was addressed by John in Part 3: abiogenesis on Earth looks to be extremely unlikely and remains a mystery but life has originated on our planet. Indeed, it has given rise to beings such as ourselves, capable of contemplating such things.
 
Coming at the problem from two different directions, it is fair to say that we came to same conclusion – clearly there is currently insufficient data to say whether we are alone in the Universe or whether the Universe is teeming with life.

​​It is inevitable that many atheists will assert that the discovery of ET intelligent civilisations would put an end to religion and undermine Scripture. Others claim that since the Bible does not mention life elsewhere, it has nothing to say about the discovery of aliens. But then, as the BioLogos article points out, the Bible does not mention life in Australia either! Indeed, the article points to a survey of people who have a religious faith, which found that, actually, most are happy with the idea of life elsewhere and do not see it as a threat to their beliefs. However, a counter-view is expressed by Robert Lawrence Kuhn in a YouTube video, Would intelligent aliens undermine God?. He suggests that ET life poses challenges to Christian theology, but less so for Eastern religions.
 
Among the many aspects discussed by Haarsma and her co-presenters, are on the one hand the universality of God’s created order, and on the other what might be called ‘parochial concerns’, those linked to planet Earth, especially related to the assumed uniqueness of humanity. The Christian Bible is truly universal in scope. It speaks not only of the Earth but of the entire Universe. God’s creation is unbounded and includes all worlds, and whatever forms of life that resides upon them.

​However, it is the Earth-bound aspects that are of primary concern. Two thousand years ago Jesus Christ lived among us and experienced human existence ‘first-hand’. The incarnation is central to our Christian faith. The obvious question posed by Haarsma is that if God created intelligent beings on other planets, would Christ have been incarnate in those species too? Or is the incarnation unique to Earth? In other words, is the Bible just the ‘local branch book’?
 
It is a question that has been explored by many authors. In his space trilogy, C. S. Lewis discussed the possibility of intelligent beings who developed a moral code and asked about their relationship with a creator-God. In the Narnia chronicles, Christ is incarnate as a lion, Aslan. The idea here is that God becomes incarnate amongst the created beings in an appropriate form. If that is so and if indeed the Universe is ‘teeming with life’, then is it reasonable to suppose that Christ became incarnate to other civilisations (assuming that abiogenesis can always lead to intelligent life and then to ‘civilisations’) throughout the Universe? For many (but not all) theologians, including C. S. Lewis, the answer is ‘Yes’ (2), while amongst scientists, Christian physicist Russell Stannard says, 'I can't see why the same Son of God, who has existed for all time, can't take on the form of other creatures once they reach the stage where they can communicate with God’ (3).
 
But actually we have to remain agnostic on this topic, albeit with an inclination to agree with C. S. Lewis and Russell Stannard. We have no idea what intelligent ET beings would look like. We have no concept of how their spirituality would be manifest, assuming that they are spiritual beings, or of how they might relate to God. We can only say ‘God knows’, with no hint or intention of irony.  God reminds us of this in the book of Isaiah, when he declares – “ … For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. … As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (4).

​The first point to consider is the definition of life and that turns out to be harder than we might suppose. In a recent panel discussion on Radio Maria (Science and Faith: Episode 6 – The Biology of Human Life – Radio Maria England) we agreed that it is easy enough to describe life in terms of the attributes and activities that we ascribe to living things. Some of our readers may be familiar with the acronym Mrs Gren which helps us to remember the essential activities of living organisms (Movement, including movement within cells; Respiration, meaning the ‘extraction’ of energy by breakdown of particular substrates; Sensitivity – response to environment etc.; Growth; Reproduction; Excretion; Nutrition). So according to this, a living thing is defined as living because it carries out these activities (but not necessarily all the time). However, in our panel discussion we found it impossible to come up with a stand-alone definition of life – any definition that we came up with was effectively dependent on the descriptors/activities mentioned above. Nevertheless, we agreed that we can tell living things apart from non-living things such a rocks and water, although viruses defy a characterisation as either living or non-living. 

​Fourthly, there is a bit more to the simplest living organism than just the two essentials. In order to prevent dilution by and loss to the surrounding medium, there needs to be containment, That is, a cell with a boundary between the inside and the outside. Further, there must be information to ‘run’ the cell. This is provided by the ‘code’ in DNA (which is the same in all organisms) and I have written in Chapter 5 of the improbability of the decoding mechanisms occurring spontaneously. 

​My fifth and final point is the question of whether there are other planets capable of supporting life. We noted in the book that Earth is a very special place with many features that help life to flourish. How likely is it that, amongst the vast numbers of planetary systems that Graham mentioned in our March blog post, there exists ‘another Earth’ or even several other Earths? On the basis of those vast numbers we might suggest intuitively that such planets must exist but actually we have no real means of calculating the probability. And if there is indeed another Earth somewhere, how likely is it that life exists there? I have already pointed out that, even on Earth, the origin of life (abiogenesis) seems improbable and yet it occurred relatively soon in the evolution of our planet. Does that mean that it will occur wherever and whenever planetary conditions permit? 

​I leave you with a thought expressed several times by the late John Polkinghorne, namely that God has created a finely tuned and fruitful universe (For example, Introduction (wordpress.com)). If God the creator has willed it, life is possible on any other suitable planet. But of course we do not know ‘the mind of God’ in relation to our question. 

​The first of these issues is that we do not have a working theory or understanding of the process of abiogenesis, which is the means by which living organisms arise from inorganic material (the proverbial ‘primaeval soup’). Despite intense research activity over many years, this has evaded satisfactory resolution. Some authors have expressed a view that ‘evolution did it’, but of course this only comes into play when there is an existing living population for evolution to act upon. Darwin’s process of natural selection can say nothing about the origin of life. So without an appreciation of how life began here, and in particular how likely or unlikely is the process of abiogenesis, it is difficult to assess whether the Universe is devoid of other life, or conversely teeming with life. The second issue related to SETI raises the question – if intelligent life is abundant in the Universe why has there been a total lack of evidence in the form of direct communication. Where are they all? 

​Our lack of success in making contact is not just about the vastness of space, but there is also a time-related aspect. There is good evidence to suggest that the Earth was formed around 4.6 billion years ago, and it has taken most of that time for intelligent life to arise. The human species, Homo sapiens, arose about 250,000 years ago, and it is only in recent times that we have developed the technology to potentially communicate across interstellar distances. Although we don’t know how typical our development is compared to extraterrestrial civilisations, we can indulge in a hypothetical comparison to make a point. We can suppose that an alien technological society would discover the energy of the atom, and potentially develop the capability to wipe itself out. Also if we assume that their society, like ours, is energy-hungry, this may result in the threat of a run-away greenhouse effect destroying their biosphere. This raises the question – how long typically would a technological civilization exist? It might be only of the order of 200 years between the development of communications technology and a potentially catastrophic demise. So here’s the point. If we collapse the 4.6 billon year history of planet Earth into a 24 hour period, then 200 years would be equivalent to a very brief 4 milliseconds (four thousandths of a second) – much shorter than the blink of an eye. So the window of opportunity, in time, to communicate with an alien society may be very brief indeed. And furthermore, how likely is it that our window of reception is synchronized with their window of transmission, given the huge sweep of cosmic history?  

​Without breakthroughs in both of these areas, we come back to the notion that all we can do is express an opinion. I think at the moment it’s ‘fashionable’ to express a view that intelligent alien life is abundant. And a great many ‘celebrity scientists’ do. The argument goes that given enough planets and enough time, life will happen everywhere, despite the fact that abiogenesis appears to be very unlikely. An example is American astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan, who presumably believed the view expressed by Ellie Arroway, the lead fictional character in his excellent novel Contact (1). Talking to a group of children, she expressed what has become a commonly held view: “I'll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space. Right?” I have to say that over the majority of my lifetime, I too have expressed this belief. 

​In recent years, I have attempted to gain more of an understanding of the problem of abiogenesis. It is fair to say that I have spent a career effectively as a physicist, so my background is not exactly ideal in allowing me to understand the complex biological issues associated with the origin of life. However, working with John Bryant in writing the book, and co-leading conferences, has spurred my interest in biology.  I now find myself reading books about organic chemistry, life and the origin of life! I do however have to choose the authors I read very carefully, as I don’t have a lifetime’s experience of the topic to determine the authority, or otherwise, of what I read. Having said that, I now find that doubts about a Universe teeming with life have crept in. From what I grasp from my attempts to understand the biology of life, I have begun to appreciate the magnitude of the problem. Even my rudimentary knowledge gives me an appreciation of the beauty, elegance and especially the complexity of the mechanisms involved in the creation and sustenance of a living organism. In trying to understand how it all started are the enigmas of the curious but vital relationship between nucleic acids (information) and proteins (the molecular work horses) and the apparently irreconcilable ‘chicken-and-egg’ type issues that John has explained so well in his contributions to the book. At this stage of our scientific understanding of abiogenesis we have to say that it remains a mystery.

​This particular landing site for Perseverance, was strongly prescribed by the principal mission objective – that is, to investigate the prospect that microbial life still inhabits the surface (or more likely the subsurface) of the Red Planet. So why Jezero Crater? Over decades, an armada of Mars orbiting spacecraft have looked down on the surface and imaged the spectacular landscape. Mars has the distinction of having the largest volcano (Olympus Mons) and canyon (Valles Marineris) in the Solar System. 

​However, perhaps the most surprising feature of the topography is the unmistakable evidence that water once flowed freely upon the surface. Scientist have estimated that around 3.8 to 3.5 billion years ago, the climate of Mars was warm and wet – effectively, the planet was a water world not unlike Earth today. Evidence of water features – tributaries, river deltas, flood plains – are abundant. So where has all the water gone? As Mars is only about half the size of Earth, with a surface gravity of 38% of ours, the atmosphere of Mars has slowly leaked away into space over the last 3.5 billion years. Current atmospheric pressure is only 0.7% of Earth’s, and any water on the surface would quickly evaporate. So now Mars is dry and arid.

​So, all those years ago it is believed that Jezero was lake, with a river inlet and outlet, and Perseverance rover’s landing site is located near the inlet. The rover has the ability therefore to look for likely sites in the lake bed and river delta where Martian microbial life might still reside. This is likely to be found in the subsurface rocks, so the rover has the capability to drill into the surface to produce core samples. These precious samples will subsequently be left on the surface to collected, and returned to Earth for detailed analysis. The methodology of this retrieval process is quite torturous, and is perhaps the subject of another blog.

​You may be surprised to learn that this brief contribution is about something that happened 19 years ago. So, you may also be asking why would this be of interest to anyone after all this time? For me, the events that occurred in November 2001 were the first tremors which heralded the personal revelation that there was more to the world than the bits described by the physicists. The shockwaves that subsequently radiated from those tremors were to profoundly change my life. It was then, at age 51, that God chose to reveal Himself to me, and I have no idea why He chose that time in my life, or why He decided to do it at all.

Perhaps a bit of back story would be helpful here. I was raised in a loving family that had no explicit faith in God, and consequently church attendance, or any other manifestation of religion, played no part in my up bringing. From a very early age I was captivated by science, which steered my education to culminate in a doctorate in mathematical physics in 1975. Subsequently, I spent a very fulfilling career in space science and engineering, both in industry and academia, before retirement in 2010. However, it was during busy years at Southampton University that I became a Christian. How this came to be was very much related to the issue of ‘science and faith’, and I wish to say something briefly about this transformation in this account. Prior to this extraordinary event, I would have described myself as a tolerant agnostic, firmly entrenched in the notion that science had explained everything to the extent that any form of god was entirely irrelevant.

My story starts in the unusual setting of a family holiday in Guernsey in the summer of 2001. Time by the pool gave me plenty of opportunity for reading and thinking, and I experienced a rare, startling insight about the nature of the Universe! This was along the lines of the universe is defined by our existence within it. This is something that these days we call cosmic fine-tuning. The argument goes that the fundamental constants of the laws of nature have to take very precise values in order that life of any form can exist in the Universe. This kind of notion has been with us for some time in the form of something called the anthropic principle, that can be expressed as – the laws of nature must be constrained to allow human existence. So why the big deal? The startling character of the insight arose because of the degree to which the fundamental constants have to be finely tuned. Most scientists are hard headed about this, and agree that if it wasn’t so we wouldn’t be here to think about it. And they are quite right. But for me, by the poolside, it was the precision of the fine-tuning that was startling. You could say that the Universe is an extremely unlikely place. Put another way, if you saw a well-shuffled pack of cards being dealt in perfect suit and numerical order, you might wonder how this could happen. Was it by chance (odds of 1 in 10^68) or was there more to it? Something behind it?

Cutting a long story short, I pondered the options, and after many weeks of reflection I had arrived at a place in which I was comfortable with the notion that there may be such a thing as a Creator God. Given my background, this was not an easy journey but it did put me in a position where I could consider attending an Alpha course at the local church in the Autumn of 2001, and the rest is history as they say. An encounter with the numinous occurred and finally convinced me that there was such a thing as the ‘spiritual realm’.

One thing I have learned from all this, and in particular in the context of courses such as Alpha, is that people are convinced not by endless academic discussion of the issues, but rather by the simple means of personal experience of God transforming power in their own lives, and in the lives of others.
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Read my story in more detail in ‘From the Big Bang to Biology: Where is God?’ by Graham Swinerd and John Bryant (Nov 2020). This blog post is adapted from a contribution to the blog section of the Faraday Churches website. See the original here.