Bruce L. Gordon reviews Stephen Hawking

Bruce L. Gordon,  (among other things) the research director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, has written an article about Stephen Hawking's new book The Grand Design.  Gordon is unhappy with the book; specifically, he is unhappy with Hawking's suggestion that the laws of physics are sufficient to explain the origin of the universe without resort to a Creator.  Hawking, he complains, has confused mathematical descriptions with actual explanations; in seeking to explain the origin of the universe in terms of quantum physics, he has forgotten that we don't have an explanation of why quantum physics works.  We don't know (as Gordon quotes Hawking as having said once) "what breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?"

Gordon notes that Einstein insisted that quantum mechanics must be an incomplete model of the world; it didn't include a "principle of sufficient causality" (though my own impression was that Einstein disapproved of the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics more than anything else, that his interest was more in restoring cause and effect on the mundane scale of particle physics, not in establishing a cause for the laws of physics themselves).  Gordon is quite clear on what "sufficient causality" entails: there must be a mind behind the equations and behind the laws they represent.

Now, it seems to me that there are three possible (or at least vaguely conceivable; perhaps I should not be so bold as to suggest that they are all possible) situations regarding universal causality.  It might be "explanations all the way down;" for every fact about nature, there is another fact that explains that, and another fact that explains that, and beneath every seemingly fundamental explanation an explanation even more fundamental (but not of course any more final) than that.  Or there might, at the base of things, be a set of mere brute facts with no explanation beyond themselves: that's just the way things are, and there's no point to asking why as there are no more basic explanations.  Or there might be certain ontologically necessary facts: it might be possible to show that logically, the facts at the base of all other explanations are not mere brute facts but the way things absolutely have to be: if we properly understand them, we would see that they could not be otherwise.

The third possibility has interested theologians and philosophers at least since St. Anselm argued that God, the Creator, was in fact this ontologically necessary ultimate explanation.  Anselm's proof has not fared terribly well, but attempts have been made to refine and revitalize the argument.  I mention this merely for the sake of completeness; Gordon himself does not seem interested in arguing for the ontological necessity of the Mind that breathes fire into the equations.

But in that case, it seems to me that Gordon and Hawking both are content to stop at a "brute fact" level of explanation.  For Hawking, the universe can come into existence because the laws of physics just permit it: we  (well, he and other cosmologists) can describe what the laws do but not why they do it.  Gordon takes this a step further: there is a Mind that enacted these laws, and we, apparently, don't know why this Mind works the way He does or what caused Him (well, of course, the implication is surely that this Mind is eternal and uncaused, but Hawking would surely insist that in that case, we can just insist that the laws of physics are eternal and uncaused).  In either case, one ends up with a brute, unexplained fact (or Fact).

Here Gordon raises (in more sophisticated ways, of course) some arguments we've encountered before in Ray Comfort's How to Know God Exists.  If Hawking says that the universe arose from "nothing," or that "nothing" is unstable, assume that "nothing" must mean absolute ontological nullity, not that Hawking is speaking informally of, say, a pre-existent, uncreated vacuum with its own uncreated uncaused laws.   


Gordon also raises the "fine tuning" problem, though he actually confronts the "multiverse" suggestion and attempts to argue against it.  He raises the "Boltzmann brain paradox" -- the idea that if we live in a pocket of spontaneously reduced entropy in  an infinite (and mostly high-entropy) universe, then there should be far more tiny pockets just organized enough to produce a single mind:.  He turns the weak anthropic principle (as an explanation of why we happen to observe a fine-tuned universe: we couldn't exist in any other sort of universe) on its head: the majority of observers should exist in much smaller, simpler universes that they don't share with worlds or other minds!


This is far more interesting an argument than Ray ever produced (well, one should expect interesting arguments from a professional philosopher of science).   I had never considered this, or possible objections to it.  Other people have: one objection, which I shamelessly borrow from the Wikipedia article on "Boltzmann brains" is that, in fact, in an infinite universe, universes that start simple and permit minds to evolve might, in fact, be much commoner than universes that consist only of a single, spontaneously-formed mind with no evolutionary precursors and no significant environment to learn from or respond to (yet which still have ideas and speculations about the universe in which they find themselves).


In any case, the idea that the only possible solution to the fine-tuning problem is  a fine-tuner is, I think, a bit suspect: in place of terribly convenient fine-tuning, you end up with a terribly convenient Fine-Tuner: in either case, a brute fact that would seem to call for an explanation but doesn't appear to have one. 

In Which I Foolhardily Take on Frank Tipler

I found this article via a link from intelligent design proponent William Dembski's blog Uncommon Descent.  Frank Tipler is a very serious cosmologist, and I find it frankly intimidating, as a scientific layman, to take issue with his arguments.  But I find them more than a little odd, and much of the oddness has very little to do with physics.  But then, I find it rather odd that Dembski, even if he's far from your typical young-earth creationist, would link so enthusiastically to this article.  Tipler is a rather unusual sort of Christian, as you can see from the article: he is not only a strict determinist, he identifies determinism with God's omniscience, which I'm pretty sure is a regarded as heterodox even by Calvinists.  "Things must happen this way" and "a Creator dwelling outside of time knows things will happen this way" are not the same statement and neither implies the other.

Tipler also asserts, in passing, that there is no real difference between organisms and machines: everything is a machine.  To be sure, Dembski probably has no real quarrel with this particular point; comparisons between living things and machines are a recurrent motif in their works.  Still, there's something mildly odd in seeing Christian apologetics come round to the position, seen as quite radical and materialistic in the 18th century, of La Mettrie's L'Homme Machine.

Tipler is commenting on the same book by Angelo Codevilla dealt with in an earlier post.  He sees the "ruling class" as dominated, intellectually, by "Darwinism" and the belief that the universe must, at bottom, be non-deterministic, stochastic and unpredictable, in which species and institutions are contingent (cf. Gould's comment in Wonderful Life that if we "rewound the tape" of life's history we'd surely get nothing like Homo sapiens),  and a "country class" dominated by the Newtonian view that the universe is rigidly deterministic and in which human beings were a foreordained outcome.  He states that Christians and Jews have never objected to common descent or having monkey ancestors (apparently I've been badly mistaken about the religious affiliations of a lot of prominent young-earth creationists -- and more importantly, so have they been), but only to the idea that nothing in nature made our arrival inevitable, the idea that we might never have evolved and that something else, perhaps intelligent, perhaps not, might have evolved in our stead.  To quite a few creationists, that we are radically separate, in kind and lineage, from other animals is at least as important as (if not indeed part and parcel of) the idea that we were foreordained.

Now, when Tipler says that we've known for decades that quantum indeterminacy is the result of interference from other universes, I cannot say whether he's right that this is the only sensible interpretation of the evidence or the equations; I can only note that, as a matter of empirical fact, quite a few physicists and cosmologists seem not to have got the message; they hold to rival interpretations of quantum theory that dismiss parallel universes and hold that the indeterminacy is quite real.  But when he says that Christians must accept determinism, I think this is a sense of "must" I have not previously encountered; I've run across Christian writers who in fact embrace indeterminacy as the key to free will and deny emphatically that the future is foreordained (even if it is foreknown by God).

Side note: I think Tipler is wrong when he says that "Darwinism" is incompatible with determinism.  He quotes a passage from Darwin in support of his view: "[If] we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time preordained … natural selection or survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature."  But having argued other people's actual opinions against Tipler's views of what they "must" think, I shall now turn around and point out that no matter what Darwin may have thought at a particular point in time (for at other points, he saw natural selection as compatible with determinism), if determinism is in fact true, then natural selection can be viewed as simply one level of explanation: how determinism looks when viewed at a particular level of detail.

Side note two: if the sort of multiple universes (the Everett "many worlds" interpretation) Tipler speaks of are real, then determinism is real: every possible outcome must take place.  We are foreordained by nature, but so are myriad different species of intelligent dinosaurs, and so are uncountable myriads of myriads of worlds where life never progressed beyond pond scum.  If human nature is foreordained in this sense, every possible sort of human nature (and there's no particular reason to suppose that the range of possible natures is narrowly limited) is foreordained and exists in some parallel universe (and for that matter, we cannot avoid the question of whether human nature in this universe is exactly what Tipler or Dembski expect or hope it to be).

I'm wondering how many ID advocates (never mind mere "I didn't come from a monkey" biblical creationists) would be quite happy with that sort of determinism, a determinism that still leaves humans as nothing special, and "foreordained" only in the sense that countless contrary possibilities were equally foreordained.  The Creator invoked by Tipler is rather sharply different from the Creator invoked by Ray Comfort, or even by Benjamin Franklin, and I think it's a bit misleading to talk as though calling them the same thing makes them the same thing.

Not such a side note: Tipler is mainly interested in whether human nature is foreordained or contingent, not in whether the properties of complex systems such as the U.S. economy or society can be predicted in detail.  Indeed, it seems to me that the goals of political conservatives and opponents of social engineering would be served by pointing out that however deterministic the world is in theory, in practice we just cannot have enough data to say for sure what the future holds, what the judgment of history will be, or what the effects of our own actions will be: the opponent of state planning wants a world of Darwinian contingency.  The article is a fascinating if perverse take on the Obama fans versus the Tea Partiers, but I'm not sure either side would recognize Tipler's interpretation of them.

Darwinism Refuted: Not Everything in the Genome is Useless

Casey Luskin has an article up on the Evolution News & Views site titled "MicroRNAs--"Once Dismissed as Junk"--Confirmed To Have Important Gene Regulatory Function."  It's a variation on one of the standard ID arguments: "evolutionists were wrong about something, therefore, the diversity and complexity of life were magicked into existence by an intelligent Designer," with a side order of another standard argument, "it's really complicated, therefore, intelligently designed."  The article references a paper in Nature on the functions of mammalian "micro-RNA's" during development.   Luskin's article ends with a provocative question: "What was "once dismissed as junk" turns out to be another astounding example of complex and specified information in the genome and a crucial part of gene regulation. Which paradigm would have predicted this finding: unguided neo-Darwinian evolution, or intelligent design?"

It's not clear what "finding" Luskin is referring to.  The specific functions of micro-RNA?  I don't think anyone predicted that, exactly, although I'd bet heavily that the scientists who discovered it have no problems with "Darwinism" and do not see their discovery as a refutation of it.

That geneticists were definitely mistaken to suppose that these micro-RNAs had no function?  That would indeed seem to be a more likely to be a conclusion of ID proponents, who, while they insist that we are entitled to no assumptions about the Designer's likely design philosophy or methods, still tend to write about "junk" in the genome as though every aspect of the genome were functional.  On the other hand, this would lead them to misleading conclusions when it is found that significant portions of the genome can be excised from an ovum without detectable effect on the organism.

That we don't know everything about the genome yet, but that almost certainly parts of it we don't yet understand have some function?  Depending on how "ultra-Darwinist" or "pan-adaptionist" one is, an evolutionist might assume that most parts of the genome we don't understand do something: why else would they still be hanging around after millions of centuries of natural selection (of course, a sufficiently subtle "pan-adaptionist" might adopt the view that some parts of the genome were parasitic, functioning for their own perpetuation rather than that of the genome as a whole).   Ernst Mayr noted that "there is a widespread belief among Darwinians that such apparently unnecessary DNA would have been eliminated long ago by natural selection if it did not have some, as yet undiscovered function" -- though he also noted that different lineages differed in the efficiency with which nonfunctional DNA was eliminated.

God and Evolution at Biola University

According to the Discovery Institute's Evolution News & Views website, Biola University in La Mirada, CA, will feature a conference on October 16 of this year, discussing the question, "Can you believe in God and Darwinian Evolution at the same time?"  The answer, the DI informs us, may surprise the audience (which, I presume, will be asked not to discuss the shocking surprise conclusion with any friends who might wish to attend future conferences to find out for themselves).

Okay, maybe it won't be such a shocking surprise conclusion.  The listed participants are all noted proponents of intelligent design and advocates of the view that Darwin is responsible for pretty much everything bad that's happened since he was gestating in his mother's womb.  They also appear to be the authors of a new book titled God and Evolution, which might lead a more cynical person than myself to suspect  that the conference is just to sell copies of the book.  Anyway, the DI promises a "wide-ranging critique of those who seek to reconcile materialistic theories such as Darwinism with belief in God."  


They could probably get an even wider-ranging critique if they'd just invite Jerry Coyne or Richard Dawkins.


Now, the question that occurs to me is, can you reconcile materialistic theories such a modern meteorology with belief in God?  According to the Bible (the believers at the conference include a mixture of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, but don't seem to feature, e.g. any Muslim or Vedic creationists), God sends the rain on the just and the unjust.  A couple of passages in the Bible (Genesis 7:11 and Malachi 3:10) speak specifically of God opening the "windows in the sky" to let the "waters above the Earth" fall down as rain.  Yet modern meteorology not only denies that the sky is the sort of thing that can have literal windows or hatchways, but attributes (and with increasing success predicts) the weather to purely material forces such as humidity, temperature, air pressure, wind direction and speed, etc.   Modern meteorologists make no appeal to God's providence or judgment, no explanation for droughts or hurricanes in terms of the sinfulness of farmers or coastal dwellers.  Yet I know of no creationists or ID proponents who insist on a supernatural explanation for precipitation or who dismiss the idea that meteorology and divine providence can somehow be complementary explanations -- although the question of "what does God actually do in theistic meteorology" seems to be just as open a question as the more common "what is God's role in theistic evolution?"

Of course, perhaps I should hope that the former question doesn't occur to the Discovery Institute.

Darwinism: So Corrupt it Corrupted Men Before It Even Existed!

Evolution News & Views, the Discovery Institute site, features an October 3 article on Angelo Codevilla's new book, The Ruling Class.  It cites Codevilla's insistence that "Darwinism corrupted Northern and Southern thinkers equally," the latter by convincing them that it was untrue that all men were created equal (and that Negroes particularly were in some respect deficient intellectually), the former by convincing them that they had a right  to "subdue lower beings or try to improve them as they please" (by, e.g. conquering the rebellious south and freeing the slaves).  I'm vaguely bemused by the suggestion, this late in the day, that abolitionism is a form of moral corruption.  I'm more surprised by the suggestion that human inequality -- an idea advocated by Plato, accepted by Aristotle, and casually assumed by most of Christendom's rulers for centuries -- represented some sort of radical intellectual innovation made possible only by the assumption of common descent and natural selection, or that prior to evolutionary ideas taking root in human minds, no government would dream of suppressing a revolt or imposing new governmental institutions on conquered territory.  Codevilla himself notes that inegalitarian ideas were taking root in the South by the 1820s (he does note the chronological problem, and notes that evolutionary ideas existed before Darwin -- though natural selection was not part of them (except for the last chapter of one obscure treatise on timber by Patrick Matthew).  He does not seem to consider that perhaps the South had motives more economic than Darwinian for adopting justifications for slavery.


I'm reminded of Answers in Genesis' frequent insistence on how Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) provided the intellectual foundations for Marxism (The Communist Manifesto was of course published in 1848).  You'd think creationists would have more respect for a scientific theory whose proponents are apparently capable of time travel.

I have frequently noted, by the way, that creationists have two separate and not entirely mutually consistent ethical critiques of evolutionary theory.  On the one hand, "Darwinism" undercuts the very notion of morality: without a transcendant moral Lawgiver and Creator, how can anything be right or wrong, justified or unjustified?  Codevilla invokes this idea, noting that one (albeit not the only) reason the Founders thought that all men were created equal was that they thought all men were created, period; evolutionary ideas undercut the theological basis for equality.

On the other hand, "Darwinism" is widely held to promote and justify any number of novel moral injunctions, albeit, apparently, repulsive ones.  Codevilla seems to feel that Darwinism implies that the strong have a right to do as they please with the weak (i.e. that this, at least, is objectively justified under evolutionary theory).  He doesn't seem to be arguing that, in fact, evolutionary theory implies that races exist and that some are inferior to others, but a number of other creationists have not been so circumspect.  The idea that evolutionary theory implies racism is central to much modern creationist apologetics.  I don't think this can follow: on the one hand, evolutionary theory implies that variation exists in all populations, and that no trait on which one could rest a claim of racial superiority or inferiority is likely to be possessed by all and only members of a supposed "superior" race; on the other, it doesn't predict that human "races" will even exist or whether they will differ in average intellectual or psychological traits.

But of course "Darwinism" is frequently blamed for every bad thing that creationists currently disapprove of: communism, national socialism, laissez-faire capitalism, sexism, racism, imperialism, feminism, animal rights (yes: Darwinism apparently implies that a white man is superior to a black man, but not to a black rat, to a woman but not to a wolf), and gay rights (though occasionally you'll find a creationist arguing that since gays tend to have fewer children than straights, evolutionists should be anti-gay; I'm not sure whether this is an attempt to win homosexual activists to the cause of creationists or to recruit evolutionists to fight gay marriage).  Oh, and it's responsible for children who are disrespectful to their parents: John McArthur, citing Danile Lapin, explains that "You see, if you believe in evolution, you believe that you're just one step better than the prior generation, and they ought to serve you. It's little wonder that the children don't have any interest in their parents; they're just one step closer to monkeys."

And of course, that view pretty much severs "evolution" from ideas like variation within population, the frequency of traits in populations, and the idea that different traits are "fitter" in different circumstances (i.e. from pretty much the basic points of evolutionary theory).  And it implies -- in a Lamarckian fashion, and contrary to Darwinian principles -- that evolution has some goal towards which it is proceeding, some purpose that we can assist or hinder.

But even putting aside such logical errors, how evolutionary theory can support any of these points of view if it eliminates the very possibility of moral judgment awaits explication.  My own view, of course, is that the idea that natural selection shaped our moral sense neither means that moral judgments are illusory or impossible, or that natural selection itself is the basis of morality.

Why Bother?

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter ... (Ecclesiastes 12:3)

The 14th chapter of How to Know God Exists presents Ray's concluding argument.  He does not recapitulate his proofs of God, but instead warns us of just how important our decision is.  Death, he repeats and stresses, waits inevitably for each of us, and willy-nilly, we proceed closer to it with each passing second.  Death is God's punishment for sin (not ours, necessarily, since it befalls babies who haven't had a chance to sin yet, and animals and plants that presumably lack the mens rea to violate God's law, but the sin of Adam, visited on all his descendants in somewhat dubious accord with Ezekiel 18:20 "The person who sins is the one who will die").


The Bible, Ray assures us, provides absolutely accurate warning that each of us deserves Hell and will receive it if we do not repent and have faith.   Not "believe;" Ray assumes, or claims to, that we already believe, indeed know, that God exists.  Ray doesn't state Pascal's wager explicitly, but it's implied in his plea: even if we retain some doubts, the benefits of faith incomprehensibly outweigh its costs, and the costs of pride and rebellion are infinitely worse than their temporary and worldly benefits.  And we'd do best to accept the Bible's warning because, again, the benefits of skepticism are limited to this life's paltry span and pleasures even if we're right, and the penalties extend forever if we're wrong.


Now, back in chapter 11, Ray deals with the passage in Deuteronomy 25:11-12, which prescribes that if a wife tries to rescue her husband from someone he's fighting by squeezing the other man's testicles, her hand must be cut off.  Ray suggests that this passage is, like Jesus' command to pluck out our eyes if they tempt us to sin, is hyperbole, not literal prescription.  And of course on his blog, if not in this book, Ray has insisted that, e.g. biblical references to the "windows of the sky" are purely figurative.  So technically, he's suggesting that not only is our only safe course to assume that the Bible is literally accurate, but to assume that "Hell" refers to an eternal conscious existence in an eternal lake of fire, even when it might speak figuratively.

Whether it's entirely safe to ignore the Koran's warnings of Jahannum for infidels (including those who worship Jesus as Creator) is not a subject to which Ray devotes space.  That any belief system could in principle "up the ante" and threaten Hell to unbelievers (the possibility did not lapse when the Koran was compiled) seems not to even occur to him.  Ray comes across as pretty sincere in this chapter: he notes that the horror of Hell impels him to try to rescue his fellow men from it (though even here, he spices up his litany of death rates from various causes with the observation that every 30 seconds a woman somewhere on Earth gives birth to a child, and obviously this woman must be found and stopped).  I can't quite shake the impression that if Ray was so very worried about getting us to turn away from our hellbound paths, he'd try a bit harder to engage the positions his opponents actually hold and have expressed to him, provide fewer jokes and sounder arguments.

Still, I should summarize the arguments he has actually presented:

1. First Cause argument: the Universe cannot come from nothing, and hence must come from an Intelligent Creator.
2. Design argument: no explanation exists or is possible for the mechanisms of life or the diversity and complexity of living things, except an Intelligent Designer.
3. Argument from General Human Experience: human beings agree that some things are right and others wrong, that human beings don't live up to their own moral standards, and that human beings want something that can't be found in this world.
4. Argument from specific Christian experience: True Christians know God personally, and you can too if you believe.
5. Argument from Biblical Information: The Bible contains facts about nature and about future events that was not naturally accessible to humans at the time it was written.
6. Pascal's Wager: Ten out of ten people die, and most of them don't want to. Let your fear of death humble your pride so that you can believe and repent.

My attempts to analyze and reply to these can be found in previous posts on this book.

Confessions of a Rocket Scientist

The penultimate chapter of How to Know God Exists actually has the confessions of two rocket engineers, Wernher von Braun and the somewhat less famous Jason W. Pratt.  Both marveled at the order, structure, and what Braun called "the inherent design" of the universe (though Ray quotes Braun as stating that a Designer is outside the realm of science: Braun as quoted seems to have thought that belief in God was quite reasonable but that there was no "scientific proof of God").   Both went the extra step and inferred, from apparent design, a Designer.


Pratt gets considerably more space (much of the article is quoted directly from an essay on his conversion) and takes a considerably more explicit creationist stance.   Pratt bases much of his case on the "thumbprint" of creation: the way a single set of laws exists and governs all manner of physical phenomena.  Although he prefers this "thumbprint of the Creator" metaphor, this is clearly the "natural law requires a Lawgiver" argument.  And I've long found that argument questionable: a Lawgiver requires regularities and consistencies of His own nature.  A Creator needs the very principles of logic and order that the "lawgiver" argument credits Him with creating.  Yet if the regularities of a supernatural Creator can exist uncaused, uncreated, and eternal, why cannot the regularities of a mere natural realm?


Pratt mounts, besides the "thumbprint" argument for creation, an argument against cosmological, chemical, and biological evolution.  Despite his engineering credentials, Pratt argues that the Second Law of Thermodynamics prevents the increase in order over time of "evolution," whether the formation of planets from interstellar dust, or the formation of life from nonliving matter, or the evolution of biological complexity and diversity.  


And therein lies the problem: when you have an argument against evolution that is also an argument against the possibility of snowflakes forming, seeds growing into plants, or refrigerators working, you have found something wrong with your argument, not something wrong with evolution.   All of these things represent local increases in order (e.g. cool air in one enclosed part of the room and warmer air elsewhere, rather than air at the same temperature throughout the room) at the expense of an overall increase in global or cosmic entropy.  The same applies to evolution: all the processes of evolution -- reproduction, inheritance, mutation, selection, speciation -- occur notwithstanding (and in perfect accord with) the laws of thermodynamics.  Even the flawed Urey-Miller experiment is fatal to a simplistic argument from entropy, since it resulted in molecules that were more complex than those the experiment started with.


Ray also quotes Pratt arguing that naturalistic origins are prohibited by the first law of thermodynamics.  This has no applicability to evolution or abiogenesis, of course, neither of which involves anything coming from "nothing."  As for the Big Bang, cosmologists, of course, have long been aware of the laws of thermodynamics.  Some have posited an initial singularity that already contained all the matter and energy of the universe, in one place, as highly organized a state as was ever possible, with all later organization emerging against the backdrop of an overall increase in the universe's entropy.  Inflationary Big Bang theory offers a seemingly outrageous possibility that is nonetheless consistent with physicists' understanding of the first law: the sudden expansion of the universe created a "negative energy" that could only be countered (keeping the total energy of the universe at zero) by the appearance of the "positive energy" that we see all around us (the universe is, in short, the ultimate accounting trick).  But Pratt (and creationists before him who have offered similar arguments) have not found something that generations of cosmologists and biologists had managed to miss: the Big Bang and evolution have always been consistent with the laws of thermodynamics, at least as scientists (if not necessarily creationist engineers) understand them.

Pratt raises the additional point that since some moons in the solar system  have retrograde orbits, they could not be the product of a Big Bang, since inertia is conserved.  I can only conclude that he is not overly impressed by turbulence or other demonstrations of just how complicated the interactions of simple forces can get without intelligence directly complicating them.

Pratt turns to a theological argument: as he came closer to Christianity, he came to accept that humanity's problem is that we disobey our Designer; we don't do what He made us to do.  This is not, he insists, the Designer's fault: we are perfectly designed, but we don't do what we are designed to do.  Now, theology often strikes me as like playing tennis without a net, without boundary lines around the court, and with the existence of the ball taken purely on faith: there are no guidelines to how far you can safely or reasonable pursue an analogy.  But I think Pratt would conclude, if any other designer's designs consistently, even invariably, failed to do what they were designed for, that the designer was not up to the task he had set himself -- that the failure was to some extent his fault.

In any case, Ray cites von Braun and quotes Pratt as evidence that faith in Christ and God is consistent with being an intelligent, well-educated person.  I personally had never doubted this.  But I do doubt that anyone is really perfectly consistently rational in all his judgments, that people are all foolish or all wise, all reasonable or all irrational.  Great scientists have held all manner of unreasonable prejudices, sometimes on scientific matters and sometimes on other matters (and sometimes been quite reasonable and, due to insufficient evidence, quite wrong nonetheless), which is why science doesn't rest on authority but on evidence.  Ray quotes Pratt's retort to the claim that men wrote the Bible -- men wrote the science texts, also -- but the information in the science texts does not rest on the claimed divine inspiration of the authors.

Having argued that the inference of a Designer and Creator is reasonable, Ray notes that we should further expect that if the Designer existed, He would reveal Himself, and His will to us, and make it possible for us to know Him personally.  I bring this up to note that technically, none of these conclusions follow from the First Cause and Design arguments: a deistic Creator Who made the world but did not afterwards intervene in it, and perhaps has no more personal interest in us than we would have in individual bacteria in a petri dish, is perfectly consistent with pure design arguments.  Ray consistently overstates what can be, even on the most generous assessment of them, reasonably inferred from his arguments.