From ENV:
As the news hammers home to us, young people are especially vulnerable to poisonous, Internet-mediated messages. That’s one reason Discovery Institute has teamed up with a gifted cinematographer who wanted to create a new video series, Science Uprising, that would be relevant to viewers in their thirties and younger. The series will launch on June 3, with new episodes to be released weekly through July 8.
An Edgier Style
The new series will have an edgier style than anything we have produced in the past. What does that mean? Take a look at the trailer…Science Uprising is premised on the idea that a majority of us share a skepticism about the claims of materialism — the claims that people are just “robots made of meat, with a really sophisticated onboard guidance system,” lacking souls, lacking free will or moral responsibility, having emerged from the ancient mud without purpose or guidance. And yet, however skeptical we may be, the media labor intensively to correct our skepticism. Popular science spokesmen like Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson insist that people are anything but designed children of a loving, intelligent creator…
Each episode features a masked narrator. Why? Because much of the burden of resisting materialism falls to scientists and others in the universities who have been made to fear speaking out in favor of the design hypothesis.
Scientists and scholars who have spoken out, pulling the mask off materialist mythology, share the truth with viewers. From episode to episode, they include chemist James Tour, philosopher Jay Richards, neuroscientist Michael Egnor, biochemist Michael Behe, philosopher of science Stephen Meyer, psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, physicist Frank Tipler, and others.
Amusing how Lawrence Krauss make a split-second appearance at 0:26, only to be cut off before he can speak a single word.
Also gotta love that the trailer opens with the “we ain’t no monkeys” trope.
Just gonna waste a post to say I don’t think DI is worth responding to.
What a load of crap.
> the claims that people are just “robots made of meat, with a really sophisticated onboard guidance system,” lacking souls, lacking free will or moral responsibility
Is not inconsistent with:
> people are designed children of a loving, intelligent creator…
(perhaps the word ‘children’ is an important qualifier)
Engineers design and create robots, but they remain robots.
For humans to be more than meat robots they have to be more than just designed and created.
Design/information/etc != soul, free will, moral responsibility
For the DI to commit to this approach they’ll have to say that human beings are not merely designed, but also intelligent agents themselves and possess a faculty to create information. So, the word ‘children’ cannot be merely a metaphor like saying an engineer’s creation is his child, but has to be the literal claim that humans have something divine within them.
Yes, quite right. They have to have evolved.
EricMH,
Well said.
The real fly in the ointment is the idea that if we are “robots made of meat, with a really sophisticated onboard guidance system” then there’s no such thing as moral responsibility. Here’s how the argument has to go:
1. Animals are self-regulating or self-guiding meat machines.
2. Human beings are animals.
3. So, human beings are self-regulating meat machines.
4. If something is a self-regulating meat machine, then it has no soul or free will.
5. Moral responsibility requires the existence of a soul or free will.
6. Therefore, self-regulating meat machines are not morally responsible.
The trick here is that (5) functions as a suppressed premise in these arguments. We’re always told that if human beings lack free will, then they lack moral responsibility, yet we’re never given an argument for this premise. It doesn’t seem obviously false — though indeed I think it is false. It captures an intuition that’s been shaped by a few thousand years of Christian theology. But a culturally shaped intuition is not a reason and cannot function as one.
(For the record, I think that premises 1-4 are basically true, though I wouldn’t use the rhetoric deployed by the anti-naturalist propagandists of the Discovery Institute.)
Ahh the good ole persecution complex again.
That would still make them meat robots, i.e. reproducible by a Turing machine. I can evolve programs that do things with genetic algorithms. In order to be more than meat robots, humans have to do something that cannot be reproduced with a Turing machine. So, to attribute the qualities they want to humans, the DI will have to commit to there being some aspect of humans that is immaterial (information doesn’t count).
The intuition seems pretty clear to me. If my computer killed a person, I would never hold the computer responsible, regardless of how complex the program is or whether the program was generated with some evolutionary algorithm, etc. If humans reduce to meat robots, then they are not essentially different than my terminator program. And, since I cannot hold my terminator program morally responsible, then neither can I hold meat robots (AKA humans) responsible.
To argue against this perspective you have to speculate that with some level of complexity, or some special generative algorithm, the terminator program somehow gains moral responsibility. But, regardless of complexity or generator, the program is always determined to do what it did by prior conditions. So, it can never be treated as if it could have done differently. On the other hand, when we hold someone morally accountable, at least people like myself, we really think there is the possibility the offender could have done something differently in the particular situation. That fundamental idea is inherently at odds with the human = meat computer concept.
The other approach people take is to deny the idea that offenders could have done something differently in their situation. But again, notice that to make this sort of argument people have to deny something very fundamental, as they did when they attribute responsibility to programs in the previous paragraph’s argument. These sorts of arguments are not very persuasive to anyone who is not already a true believer, and it seems like the arguer is taking a wrong turn if they have to work so hard to make their point.
I doubt that any actual animal is “reproducible by a Turing machine.”
Me too. Eric seems to think too highly of his computer simulations.
EricMH:
Neil:
Eric,
By “reproducible”, do you mean “simulatable”?
ETA: I ask because you write:
A Turing machine can’t hit a baseball or swim laps in a pool, but it can presumably do the computations needed to drive those activities or to simulate them.
How do we know that a “meat robot” is “reproducible” by a Turing Machine?
Just look at the list of luminaries at the end. Jeeez.
But they are right, its really slick.
I would agree with this. I would go so far as to say all living creatures are not reducible. ID opens the door to more than just God’s intervention in nature, such as this neo-vitalism I’m throwing out here.
This is not about a computer simulation. It’s a mathematical argument based on computer science theory. As far as we know, all physical laws are Turing reducible (i.e. can be replicated with a Turing machine). This means that if some organism exhibits non Turing reducible behaviors, then that organism also cannot be reduced to physical laws.
Yes, exactly. Avoids the philosophical question of what the thing is in some ontological sense. Also, means we cannot go in the opposite direction. Even though everything non-Turing reducible also must be non-physical, this does not mean Turing reducible entities are therefore physical.
Insofar the thing is a robot, i.e. its present state is entirely determined by past state, then we can build a Turing machine (or even just a finite automata) to simulate it.
This looks like a cool great innovative thing.
Yes anybody questioning the establishment is in danger on a curve.
We live in oppressive times relative to North american history in freedom ogf thought/speech.
Good for all and not just young ‘uns.
I never like the MATERIAL word. What does that mean?
Yay they said the word SOUL. Even DI folks shy from that word.
If some spiritual force constructs a material object, say, a mouse, is that mouse Turing “reproducible?
James Tour’s critique of Origin of Life research is correct, it’s a sham industry, it deserves to be called out.
There are chemical structures that are, as a matter of principle, not the expected outcome of random conditions. Tour is qualified to criticize the Origin of Life research industry.
Should the research be de-funded? Well, until the researchers stop doing media hype and start telling the truth, the answer is “yes.” If the truth is, “we really don’t know” then say so. If the truth is, “we believe life emerged, but we don’t know whether it is consistent with expectation” then say so. But they aren’t doing that.
It is textbook biochemistry to say, “cellular life comes from other cellular life.” This implies that it is natural to expect that non-cellular entities should not make cellular life. We know this from observation AND we know theoretical reasons this is so. It’s not too much to ask origin of life researchers to state the A PRIORI odds that life will form on the Earth from plausible conditions.
EricMH:
“Could have done differently” is neither necessary nor sufficient to ground moral responsibility, in my opinion.
To see why it’s insufficient, consider the following thought experiment. Suppose we create a robot that uses a simple and deterministic algorithm to make yes/no decisions. The twist is that during the final stage of its decision process, the robot consults a Geiger counter and observes the pattern of radioactive decay. Five percent of the time, on average, the Geiger counter produces a particular type of pattern. When the robot sees this pattern, it inverts the decision it would otherwise have made. The remaining 95% of the time it sticks with the output of its algorithm.
Every decision the robot makes falls into the “could have done differently” category, because radioactive decay is a non-deterministic process. However, it would be silly to attribute moral responsibility to such a simple robot simply because a random process figured into the final stage of its decision making.
Another problem is that if you adopt “could have done differently” as a criterion, you end up denying moral responsibility to the Christian God much of the time. A morally perfect God can only make morally perfect decisions. In cases where one alternative is morally superior to the others, a morally perfect God must choose it. His nature demands it, and he cannot do otherwise. Thus, by your criterion, he is not morally responsible for it.
stcordova,
If you give us the odds a universe will have a Creator God…
“There exists a code so complex and advanced that it defies the probability of chance (…obability of chance …)”. 😃
One doesn’t need the God hypothesis to assert when a chemical state going to another state is probable given random conditions within even generous ranges (like temperature, pH, availability of reactants, etc.).
Eugene Koonin suggested the RNA world, for example, is so astronomically improbable as to require multiple worlds. That’s an example of stating an a priori probability of a particular outcome.
stcordova,
And why should I give a crap what Koonin thinks? (That’s me being ‘edgy’ 😁). Does he not also disagree with you on pretty much everything?
Allan, to Sal:
Because the RNA world defies the probability of chance (…obability of chance…).
*Rips off gorilla Fawkes mask*
… If it were to just spontaneously assemble from some dilute mix of atoms or monomers, as opposed to through some physical and chemical evolutionary process. You always “forget” to mention that.
No, James Tour is wrong on that point, and completely so.
What the fuck are “random conditions”? Is an aqueous stream running down the side of a volcano a “random condition”? What’s a non-random condition? Is the upper atmosphere a random condition or a non-random condition? How about a particular spot on the surface of an asphalt road in Wyoming three days from now, at noon, is that a random or non-random condition?
It’s not an industry, it’s a field of investigation. Also, Tour may be qualified to understand and assess chemistry, but he’s got zero qualifications of relevance in biology, geology, or astronomy.
No it should be increased. If anything, the fact that the answer isn’t known, and life’s origin is one of the Big Questions means we should put all the more resources into it.
If physics can have a Large Hadron Collider, biology can have a Large Life Explorer(tm).
They don’t do that to any unusual extend in the origin of life field that they aren’t also doing in nutrition, cancer, or synthetic organic chemistry(Tour’s field), and it’s mostly science journalists responsible for generating hype and controversy to bait clicks.
I have not read even a single article or paper, or seen any interview of an origin of life researcher, EVER, who is not completely honest and upfront about the fact that they don’t know how life did or could originate.
I will be highly impressed if you can find even a single example of a reputable origin of life researcher claiming otherwise. And even if you could find such an example, it would be rather disengenous to claim that person’s opinion is diagnostic of the state of the entire field.
Obviously life emerged, the question is how. It could not have always existed, so it had to emerge by some means at some point. Hypotheses have been made for how it could have happened, and those are in the process of being tested. Those experiments then have the potential to discriminate among possibilities. But it costs money, and takes time.
We also know that the way in which cellular life makes cellular life is by chemical reactions converting non-life (CO2, NH2 or NH3, H2 and so on) into cellular life. That’s what primary producers do, they convert non-life into life and it’s physics and chemistry.
Then it is also natural to expect that life must have an infinite regression of cell divisions, so God is out of the picture right?
Look, obviously the rule cells only come from cells must break at some point, right? Because life cannot go back infinitely far, as the universe itself becomes hostile to cellular life if we go back far enough. There could not have been cells in existence when the heaviest atoms in the universe were helium and beryllium, obviously. So life must have originated later when it could persist. How? We don’t know.
We also know that cells come from chemistry and physics, and that the material constituents of all cellular entities are atoms that ultimately derive from non-living materials, such as minerals, metals, and inorganic carbon dioxide and atmospheric molecular nitrogen. Which in turn come from the nuclear fusion processes that take place in the cores of stars, supernovae, and neutron star collisions.
That would obviously require them to know what the first form of life looked like and the conditions under which it originated, which they don’t. You can’t calculate the probability of an unknown state of matter. That’s why they have to do research to guide their thinking and understanding, which again takes time and costs money.
Of course, we also don’t know the a priori probability that a God would create life exactly the way we see it, so if you demand such a calculation of origin of life researchers, yet don’t demand the same from your Young Earth Creationism you have a hypocritical double standard.
This looks cool, I would defintely check it out.
I don’t see how KN has debunked the argument in the slightest.
The most meaningless sentence in that video is “There exists a code so complex and advanced that it defies the probability of chance”. What does that even mean?
It’s not obvious to me why you wouldn’t hold it responsible. I suppose this comes down to exactly what it means to say that you hold something responsible?
If my computer killed someone, I’d turn it off, and if I considered my computer important enough to keep it turned on, I’d want to ensure it didn’t be put in a situation where it could kill someone again. Whether I am convinced my computer understands at some rational or emotional level what it has done, or whether it could have done otherwise given the exact same circumstance, seems rather besides the point. This also raises the question of exactly free will is and how it works.
Turning my computer off or ensuring it is not again put in a position to kill someone is a way of holding my computer “responsible”. If my computer killed someone through a design flaw or damage done to it, then repairing or redesigning it could be considered a form of rehabilitation. If it could not be repaired or redesigned, yet keeping it on was still important, constraining it’s freedom so it can’t kill again could be analogous to sending a person to prison.
That’s you holding yourself responsible. You are not holding the computer responsible
— in my opinion.
Well it could be someone else’s computer. Though even if it was mine I don’t see how I’d be holding myself responsible by taking steps to prevent my computer from doing unwanted things.
Rumraket,
Yes. The term “responsibility” needs splainin’. The thing is, it seems like we can’t do a whole lot better than:
S is morally responsible for some past event E if and only if S either ought to have done E or ought not to have done E.
And it doesn’t help. If we don’t understand one we aren’t going to understand the other. Your computer is morally required not to kill anybody else if it could and it shouldn’t. Seems to me that there’s not much that can be done with any of that. Some obviously want to go from the computer to the claimed lack of responsibility, while others will want to go from the responsibility to the computer’s claimed obligations. I don’t think it’s decidable myself. We don’t really know what we’re talking about.
Why do you think (4) is true?
I think you only show that it’s not sufficient. And that’s not really controversial. What’s the argument that it’s not necessary?
Yes! And that’s all the more reason to take him seriously. Btw, this is the Evolutionary Genomics group he leads at the NIH (he’s the guy in the center with the T-shirt and faded jeans). He’s no minor player in questions of ID:
I completely agree with Sal’s reasoning here, but I’m surprised that he admits it. It’s true that a person disagreeing with Sal is a reason to take that person seriously.
Eric,
The promoting of soul/free will/moral responsibility and accepting common descent/universal common ancestor by DI (Paul Nelson apparently doesn’t accept them, which makes DI look even more divided) make people like me confused.
If only humans have souls, free will and moral responsibility and chimpanzees don’t, for example, then DI forces the belief upon everyone and themselves that God must’ve guided the evolution and miraculously given mankind all those special and distinct attributes…
Most opposed to ID/God come here to vomit at these ideas no matter what the evidence… Why? I’ve learned over the years that deep down they have their own reasons… (most of them can’t reconcile the idea of a loving God and the prevalence of evil. Religious hypocrisy is another reason).
Why would you, or DI, give them more reasons to feel nauseous?
Sal,
Even ordinary chemists, unlike Szostak and Tour, suspect that chemistry doesn’t make inanimate matter animate…
For example, will Shostak ever be able to re-create something even remotely resembling a bacteria and make a flagellum to self-assemble?
We are not the only ones that know that life on the fundamental level is at least quantum…
For example, anyone who has eaten lettuce recently ate a “quantum computer”…
Why would “animal life” be non-quantum?
Frank Tipler is mentioned in the video.
Tipler was a student of John Wheeler, and Wheeler is a pioneer of Quantum Mechanics, with two of students winning Nobel Prizes.
Tipler connects Quantum Mechanics to ID in his book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle
walto,
I saved that explanation for the morning because it’s more complicated.
First, I think that none of us are ultimately morally responsible for our actions because their ultimate causes always lie outside of us. I oppose retributive punishment for that reason, though I think that punishment as a deterrent is acceptable.
While we aren’t the ultimate causes of our actions, we’re certainly the proximate causes of many of them. When it’s the right kind of proximate cause, you can say that we are morally responsible. Trump is morally responsible for his obstruction of justice, for instance. It originates with him (in the proximate sense), and it’s the result of the kind of person he is, his values, and the thought process (such as it is) that he applies to his decision making.
Note that “could have done otherwise” doesn’t appear in that formulation.
As in the robot example, “could have done differently” adds nothing but a random element to a person’s behavior, and moral responsibility cannot derive from pure randomness, in my opinion.
This is an un-necessary conflation and introduction of metaphysical issues with science.
Science might be able to argue whether an event or structure violates chemical and physical expectation (as in “looks like a miracle”). Whether it is a miracle in the theological/philosophical sense is outside of science. Whether it proves the existence of a non-material realm is probably outside of science. There is no need to raise the immediate question of “materialist mythology” since this question is probably outside of formal resolution!
stcordova,
Regardless how lofty he may be (and I too had a good chuckle at the inadvertently self-deprecating way you phrased your response), taking a probabilistic approach to OoL is bunk; if you don’t know the conditions, you can’t sensibly say how many planets or universes it would take. What’s the probability of iron melting? Depends.
(Bold added by me for emphasis)
(I think that no organism can be “reduced” to physical “laws”, and that’s a philosophical issue, not proof that organisms are not physical, let alone that there’s a magical-being-in-the-sky.)
So, it’s not about simulations, but about simulations exactly?
Seems like you think too highly of your computer simulations, you mistake being physical with being “reducible” to “physical laws,” and you mistake being physical with being computationally-“reducible”, and to be computationally-“reducible” with being computationally-“simulatable”.
I particularly like the Guy Fawkes analogy. Is the DI aware that it didn’t end well for Guy Fawkes?
Acartia:
The gorilla/Fawkes masks are what the bad guys, the evilutionists, are forcing us to wear. The opening lines of the trailer:
But the difference is we can easily hypothesize conditions for iron melting. We cannot, as a matter of principle hypothesize cellular life emerging by even a modest list of conditions.
Tour lays out that so many conditions in time sensitive sequence must take place. Tour being a synethetic chemist sees all the steps that would be needed to even do a little in a lab context, much less in a pre-biotic scenario.
For that reason, I’m a creationist — it’s too hard for me to believe all such conditions could happen.
It doesn’t mean formally that “God did it” but informally it’s good enough for me.
No, that isn’t the reason you’re a creationist. If it were, you would be proposing that the first cell was created, and would allow for evolution to happen subsequently. I’m not sure just why you’re a creationist, but I’m sure that isn’t it.
Yes it is.
Doesn’t make it possible to calculate a probability though, which is why I picked a straightforward example to illustrate the point. Given the right conditions, it does. Given the wrong conditions, it doesn’t. Probability doesn’t come into it.
I don’t see what difference that makes. “We don’t know the conditions, so the probability is astronomical”.
It probably didn’t happen in a lab.
I don’t think that’s the reason you’re a creationist.
Formally or informally, it is scientifically incurious.