This year marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of the book Origins and Destiny1 by the late Robert Gange. The author (1936-2019) was a research scientist and engineer, specializing in cryogenics and information theory. Dr. Gange also wrote extensively on scientific evidence for a creator.
I obtained a copy of Origins and Destiny shortly after its publication. Its foundational arguments for biological design, rooted in the physical basis of information theory, played a pivotal role in informing me (at that time, a young post-doctoral scientist in physics) that natural processes alone could not account for the existence of life. I have briefly referred to Dr. Gange’s writings in an earlier article.
Intelligence Over Naturalism
I will focus my comments here on Gange’s contributions, which were important for me, to scientifically demonstrating intelligence rather than naturalism as the necessary source of design.
Gange begins by examining cosmological observations that point to the beginning of the material existence of our universe. More modern concepts of theoretical physics, such as cosmic inflation and quantum fluctuations, are cogently addressed as well and reasonably rejected as valid naturalistic causes of the Big Bang. In this, my recent review of the book Battle of the Big Bang suggests that four more decades of sustained research have not altered the conclusion pointing towards a transcendent designer and First Cause of the universe.
In the eighth chapter of Origins and Destiny, Gange examines the question, “Did intelligence design the Earth?” In life’s supporting more than 10 million species, Gange identifies multiple planetary life-support systems that he notes “are complex in a coherent way.” Suggesting intelligent design, Gange further states, “If we are going to explain the origin of the world we must be able to logically explain how this functional coherence came into existence.”2
The Informational Basis of ID
Gange expresses his understanding of the informational basis of intelligent design with the following question pertaining to the observable outcome of Earth as a complex, coherent system that has sustained life in multiple forms for the better part of its 4.5-billion-year history:
What’s really at issue in the question of earth’s origin is the source of the informational specification that organizes the atomic parts in a life-support system.3
In addition to physical evidence of design, Gange homes in on several existential indicators relevant to the question of ultimate reality.4 These include evidence for finite versus infinite time, thus disallowing the philosophical bauble of infinite possibilities. Addressing a phenomenon common to every human, Gange asks, “How can nonliving matter ultimately configure itself into beings that experience pleasure and pain?”
The defining essence of our inner identity or “individuality” is recognized as inconsistent with a purely materialistic universe in which every particle interacts with every other particle through forces that permeate the entire spacetime fabric of the cosmos. As Gange frames the issue, “How can private experiences materialize in a universal system where each part ‘knows’ about every other part?”
“Life” as a Unique Property
In acknowledging “life” as a unique property distinguishable from non-life, Gange asks what possible distribution of physical particles brought it into existence, since within naturalism, life’s origin appears to defy the known properties of matter. Apart from an intelligent designer, “…we are forced to believe that nucleic acids eventually acquire awareness of their own existence when they are mixed.”
With peculiar prescience, Gange suggests that theism allows for life to be “channeled” from a transcendent realm “into the space and time of our world.” Recent biological research affirms this concept, as highlighted in extensive research by biologist Richard Sternberg and described in the recent book by David Klinghoffer, Plato’s Revenge. Gange summarizes his view on how theism overcomes the limitations of naturalism:5
Theism, however, removes this strait jacket by allowing us to explain life in terms of the living, and the highly organized world in terms of intelligence and design.
The Tip of the Iceberg
As extensions of the previously mentioned experience of individualism, Gange recognizes the counter-materialistic realities of consciousness and free will, suggesting that “the conscious capacity for free choice, and the involuntary unfolding of physical matter, are separate and distinct.” In the last 40 years, it’s safe to say that advances in physics and neuroscience have done nothing to dispel the mystery attending the disparity between nature’s laws and the reality of the freedom of consciousness.
The issues I’ve highlighted so far from Gange’s book are the tip of the iceberg of his treatise on physical evidence for a designer. With perceptive insight, Gange introduced arguments for intelligent design that resemble for me central features of the ongoing ID argument. I’ll explain his primary case from information theory and a quantum version of the second law of thermodynamics in a follow-up article.
Notes
- Robert Gange, Origins and Destiny: A Scientist Examines God’s Handiwork, (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1986).
- Gange, Origins and Destiny, (1986), p. 57.
- Gange, Origins and Destiny, (1986), p. 61.
- Gange, Origins and Destiny, (1986), ch. 4.
- Gange, Origins and Destiny, (1986), p. 28.