HallaK9

Hello.

I've just bought 'The Fifth Miracle' and have now read some 50+ pages of it. It's good reading if a bit heavy for a non-native English speaker at times.

So my question is: How reliable an author is he when it comes to biology? I had never heard of him before buying the book, but after a brief search in the Internet found out that he's a serious phycisist and a competent popularizer. It's just that I also found some comments about 'the minor inaccuracies' when he's talking about molecular biology and as a layman I would like to know what (if any) these are.

So if anyone could enlighten me, I would be grateful,

Antti

Steven S

Paul Davies research in physics was about quantum field theory on curved spacetime. That is, semiclassical quantum gravity. He has written one of the two textbooks that I know of on this subject. Being a competent relativist in no way makes you an authority in biology so I would take much of what he writes on that subject with a grain of salt. That said, I haven't read his book nor am I really qaulified as a physicist to judge his book.

Kent Stevens

I have read a few books by Paul Davies. I would warn you that he seems to be a Deist and he is against the theory of natural selection.

Paul Davies has been awarded the Templeton Prize for the advancement of religion. This prize consists of about one million dollars and is given out each year to a person that helps support religion. Paul Davies is supposed to help prove the existence of god with his books.

Paul Davies also suggests that natural selection is not sufficient in explaining evolution. But Paul Davies does not give any better alternative than say that vague self-organising principles are behind evolution.

I once believed that these self-organising principles could be linked to what we should do. I thought that murder is wrong could be explained by looking at self-organising principles. But I now go along with Hume and say that murder is wrong only because we decide that this is the case.

After finding out that Paul Davies won the prize for help proving the existence of god, I became disillusioned with him. His discussions about physics might be interesting but his biology discussions are outside his area of speciality. For me his philosophy was a dead end and it directed me away from atheism, natural selection, and ideas of personal morality.

David Gould

I am surprised that people see Davies as arguing for God. In the Fifth Miracle he is arguing that our current ideas do not come close to explaining life from non-life. (which is true, as far as i am aware). While some of what he says could be taken to be in support of a deity of some kind, he also says that current developments in information theory, games theory and complexity theory have promising leads.

I read the Mind of God a long time ago and it certainly was not an argument fo the existence of a God. At worst, Davies suggested that the universe could be technological in nature, in that an advanced species somewhere could have had the time to manipulate the entire universe.

I think he is more a pantheist of sorts.

Secular Pinoy

I happen to like The Fifth Miracle. It's a book on biogenesis, and he gives a good account of some of the most common theories. While I am aware that he gives the faithful a lot of lip sevice, the actual book presented only naturalistic theories. In fact, Phillip Johnson gave a pretty negative review of The Fifth Miracle in the ARN website. All in all, it's a fine book and a good read for those non-specialists who want a summary of all the major theories of biogenesis.

I also liked Rare Earth (supposedly inspired by a creationist) and Just Six Numbers (presenting the case for a fine-tuned universe), both of which are theism-friendly insofar as it supports their Anthropic Principle.

Oolon Colluphid

Just to be clear, these are by Michael Asher (sorry, never heard of him ) and Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, respectively, not Davies. I've not read it yet, but from what I have read of his (book reviews etc) I'm not sure Rees would take too kindly to being linked to any sort of Anthropic Principle .

Oolon

HallaK9

Thanks for the input everyone!

I'm having some trouble with some of the claims Davies makes in the book, but I'll get back to them as soon as I've finished it. I still like his style, though, and as secularpinoy said, it is a good (excellent, even) summary of what we know at the moment. It's just that every now and then I get this "waitwaitwait"-feeling when he's drawing his conclusions.

Antti

MortalWombat

I don't know of any biologist who would say that natural selection is sufficient for explaining evolution. There are other factors, such as genetic drift, involved. See:

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/genetic-drift.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/genetic-drift.html</a>

Kent Stevens

I would be recommend caution about Paul Davies, as shown by the other people who have received Templeton Prizes. This prize is for the advancement of religon and science. Listed below are some of the people who have received the prize.

1973
Mother Teresa of Calcutta, founder, the Missionaries of Charity
1982
The Rev. Dr. Billy Graham, founder, The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
1986
Rev. Dr. James McCord, Princeton, N.J.
Dr. Inamullah Khan, secretary-general, World Muslim Congress
1989
The Very Reverend Lord MacLeod of the Iona Community, Scotland, and Professor Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Starnberg, West Germany
1995
Dr. Paul Davies, professor, University of Adelaide, Australia
1996
William R. “Bill” Bright, president and founder, Campus Crusade for Christ International, California
1997
Pandurang Shastri Athavale, founder and leader of Swadhyaya, a spiritual movement credited with improving the lives of 20 million people
1999
Ian Barbour, professor emeritus, Carleton College, Minnesota

Personally, I would dislike being listed with some of these religious people. Paul Davies is not supposed to be of any particular faith. Paul Davies is not an out and out theist. He is something like a Deist, Pantheist, or a religious Unitarian Universalist. However, he does not seem to be an atheist. He can be very touchy feely with religious people.

He does use science, but what he says can be used by religious people to bolster their religious ideas. What Paul Davies says about the unlikelihood of life arising by chance can be used to argue that god is necessary. By casting doubts on Neo-Darwinism, Paul Davies can partly help religious people dismiss this theory. Paul Davies is not at all like Richard Dawkins in his general books.

Paul Davies goes beyond Neo-Darwinism, Mendel genetics, genetic drift, and other usually biologically accepted explanations for evolution. From Paul Davies book "The Cosmic Blueprint" is the following passage.

"Far more likely, it seems, is that complexity in biology has arisen as part of the same general principle that governs the appearance of complexity in physics and chemistry, namely the very non-random abrupt transitions to new states of greater organizational complexity that occur when systems are forced away from equilibrium and encounter 'critical points'."

crocodile deathroll

There is one scientist I know who really agues for the existence of God and that is John Polkinghorne who just happens to be an Anglican Priest, which is no surprise. I am not sure if he got a Templeton Prize for his efforts.

Paul Davies got his Templeton Prize for reconciling science with religion and not for argument for the existence of God. I would think the fundies would really hate his work and would rather cheat their way to getting such a prize by faking archeological artifacts like their numerous attempts to fake a wreck site of Noah's Ark.

I think there should also be a Templeton Prize for proving God does not exist because that would of answered theologians' longest held questions. Does God exist?

crocodile deathroll