Eric Hedin, meet Granville Sewell
Physicist Eric Hedin has posted to the Discovery Institute site Evolution News on 27 November 2024 an argument that the processes of physics cannot account for intelligent life. As he is a well-trained physicist (whose Ph.D. degree was from my university), and who has done experimental work on plasma physics, we can expect a mathematically sophisticated argument which would give us all pause.
Well, here’s the guts of his argument, from the Evolution News post:
In fact, for making anything other than large-scale conglomerations of matter (such as stars and planets), nature has only one tool in its bag — the electromagnetic force. This tool primarily manifests as the electric force, causing opposite charges (such as electrons and protons) to attract, and like charges to repel. It is completely indiscriminate, and cannot select between multiple options, preferring one charge over another, except for the rule that the bigger the charges and the closer the distance between them the stronger the resulting force. Can you imagine such blind, brute forces pulling together countless atoms of specific elements into the necessary configurations to result in a functioning laptop computer?
and
The “boundaries of science” refers to the common-sense conclusion that nature is limited in what it can produce to outcomes consistent with the laws and forces of nature. Natural processes are sought and found to be sufficient for natural phenomena, such as star formation or precipitation.
However, attempting to naturally explain the origin of some things found within our universe comes into conflict with the boundaries of science. Positing a natural explanation for the origin of the universe itself, the origin of the specific suite of physical parameters finely tuned to allow life, the origin of life itself, and the origin of conscious, intelligent minds, all defy what we have discovered about the limits of natural processes.
And basically, that’s the argument. Evolutionary biology does not pretend to address the origin of the universe, or the issue of fine-tuning in physics, and even the origin of life is outside its scope, though adjacent. But somehow Hedin knows that physical forces cannot explain “the origin of conscious, intelligent minds”. I wonder how he knows that.