Friday, April 3, 2009

Natural Selection and the Haber Process

The Haber process is responsible for the synthetic mass production of ammonia.

The ammonia is used to make nitrogen fertilizers, which play a critical role in feeding about one third of Earth's population.

The ammonia from the Haber process is also used to make ammunition. Germany used the Haber process during WWI to do this. Some have speculated that Germany could not have waged WWI (or waged it for as long as it did) without the benefit of the Haber process.

So this technology is simultaneously responsible for preserving the lives of over a billion people...and could ultimately be responsible for the deaths of just as many?

Natural selection is comparable to the Haber process. It has led to us, for instance. However, almost all of the species that have ever existed are extinct.

Would an all-knowing, all-loving, all-good god use this kind of mechanism to bring us into existence?

1 comment:

Ketan said...

Upon even moderately honest analysis, it'd be sufficiently clear that an all-intelligent, all-knowing God would never produce finished products by trial and error, unless and of course, that God'd be playing a cruel game only for his/her amusement, in which case the idea of an all-loving God flies out the window. I didn't intend to invoke another case of PROBLEM OF EVIL, but what to do, it was just too obvious to be not stated in here. TC.