Is evolution smarter than you are?

Evolutionists are fond of citing Orgel’s Second Rule: “Evolution is smarter than you are.” I have previously expressed skepticism about this rule (see here and here), but I’ve had no success in persuading people with a naturalistic metaphysical outlook. Yesterday, however, I came across a LiveScience article by Tia Glose titled, The Spooky Secret Behind Artificial Intelligence’s Incredible Power (October 9, 2016), which might prove to be a game-changer. We’ll see.

The article discussed a research team’s startling new findings regarding deep-learning algorithms, a class of algorithms which somehow manage to outperform other AI algorithms – and human beings – at playing games such as chess or go, despite the fact that they start out absolutely “clueless,” while the other algorithms are given the rules of the game in advance. Deep learning algorithms also have a hierarchy, which makes them far superior to shallow networks that may contain as little as one layer:

…[D]eep learning or deep neural network programs, as they’re called, are algorithms that have many layers in which lower-level calculations feed into higher ones. Deep neural networks often perform astonishingly well at solving problems as complex as beating the world’s best player of the strategy board game Go or classifying cat photos, yet no-one fully understood why.

It turns out, one reason may be that they are tapping into the very special properties of the physical world, said Max Tegmark, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a co-author of the new research.

The laws of physics only present this “very special class of problems” — the problems that AI shines at solving, Tegmark told Live Science. “This tiny fraction of the problems that physics makes us care about and the tiny fraction of problems that neural networks can solve are more or less the same,” he said…

It turns out that the math employed by neural networks is simplified thanks to a few special properties of the universe. The first is that the equations that govern many laws of physics, from quantum mechanics to gravity to special relativity, are essentially simple math problems, Tegmark said. The equations involve variables raised to a low power (for instance, 4 or less). [The 11 Most Beautiful Equations]

What’s more, objects in the universe are governed by locality, meaning they are limited by the speed of light. Practically speaking, that means neighboring objects in the universe are more likely to influence each other than things that are far from each other, Tegmark said.

Many things in the universe also obey what’s called a normal or Gaussian distribution. This is the classic “bell curve” that governs everything from traits such as human height to the speed of gas molecules zooming around in the atmosphere.

Finally, symmetry is woven into the fabric of physics. Think of the veiny pattern on a leaf, or the two arms, eyes and ears of the average human. At the galactic scale, if one travels a light-year to the left or right, or waits a year, the laws of physics are the same, Tegmark said…

All of these special traits of the universe mean that the problems facing neural networks are actually special math problems that can be radically simplified.

“If you look at the class of data sets that we actually come across in nature, they’re way simpler than the sort of worst-case scenario you might imagine,” Tegmark said. [Bolding mine – VJT.]

I’d like to summarize my argument:

[UPDATE, in response to comments below: I define an algorithm as smart if it can solve problems that even the most talented humans, working separately or together in a team, are incapable of solving – even when given ample time – VJT.]

1. The deep-learning algorithms, which are so much smarter than we are, excel human beings (and other algorithms) only for a special class of mathematical problems that are capable of being radically simplified, thanks to certain properties they possess.

1a. Deep-learning algorithms are the only ones that could be said to be “smarter” than we are, at solving certain problems. [UPDATE, in response to criticisms below – VJT.]

2. Only if evolution’s “search” (or sampling) problem belongs to this special class of mathematical problems is there good reason to believe that evolution is smarter than we are, and that it is capable of producing “designoid” structures which far exceed in sophistication anything that our best scientists could come up with.

3. The evolutionary “search” (or sampling procedure) doesn’t appear to belong to this special class of mathematical problems, as it fails the first condition: it cannot be exhaustively described by a set of simple equations involving variables raised to a low power (four or less), as the laws of physics can.

4. Hence there is no reason to believe that “evolution is smarter than you are,” when searching for proteins that fold up and are capable of performing a useful biological task – or more generally, creating a biological system which is functionally coherent, such as photosystem I, or the visual system (described in Douglas Axe’s book, Undeniable).

5. If there is no reason to believe that even the best unguided natural processes (deep-learning algorithms) are capable of producing complex biological structures which are more advanced than anything humans could come up with, then the only remaining alternative is to suppose that these structures are the result of an intelligently guided process.

Discuss.

But what if premise 3 of my argument turns out to be wrong? Would that undercut the case for design? No: what it would do is kick it up one level. One could still ask why we happen to live in a universe where not only physics, but also evolution, can be described by a special class of mathematical problems that are capable of being radically simplified. Why, in other words, is the universe – and evolution – governed by processes which are so “mind-friendly”? However, this would be a fine-tuning (or cosmological) design argument, rather than a biological argument for intelligent design.

A final thought: the article also seems to suggest a way of saving the world from being overrun by AI, as many scientists fear it will be. People of my age will remember this humorous cartoon, which appeared in Punch, on August 25, 1981. Robots on wheels proved to be utterly unable to navigate stairs. The cartoon’s caption read: “Well, this certainly buggers our plan to conquer the Universe.” Today’s robots are far more mobile, of course. However, let us suppose that in order to enter a certain neighborhood, they had to pass through a certain gate, where they were required to solve a problem which humans can solve, but which doesn’t fall into the narrow set of problems at which deep-learning algorithms excel. The robots would be stymied at the outset. Communities may have to be redesigned with these kinds of gates guarding vital links in our infrastructure, in order to prevent society from being overrun by rogue AI systems. Thoughts?

93 thoughts on “Is evolution smarter than you are?

  1. Hi everyone,

    Thanks for your comments. First of all, I’d like to respond to Tom English. Let me be clear: I have absolutely no intention of defending CoI. None. To be truthful, I’m currently rather skeptical of the theorem. So what am I getting at? If you want to see where I’m coming from, you might want to have a look at this essay by Dr. Robin Collins, a philosopher who (to the best of my knowledge) has written nothing on CoI.

    http://home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/Fine-tuning/stanford%20multiverse%20talk.htm (The meaty part is in section 6, where Collins cites the atheist Nobel Laureate Steve Weinberg as acknowledging the marvelous simplicity and elegance of the laws of Nature.) A brief excerpt:

    …[T]his “fine-tuning” for simplicity and elegance cannot be explained either by the universe-generator multiverse hypothesis or the metaphysical multiverse hypothesis, since there is no reason to think that intelligent life could only arise in a universe with simple, elegant underlying physical principles. Certainly a somewhat orderly macroscopic world is necessary for intelligent life, but there is no reason to think this requires a simple and elegant underlying set of physical principles…

    Specifically, as applied to this case, one could argue that the fact that the phenomena and laws of physics are fine-tuned for simplicity with variety is highly surprising under the non-design hypothesis, but not highly surprising under theism. Thus, the existence of such fine-tuned laws provides significant evidence for theism over the non-design hypothesis.

    This is what I meant when I wrote in my OP:

    One could still ask why we happen to live in a universe where not only physics, but also evolution, can be described by a special class of mathematical problems that are capable of being radically simplified. Why, in other words, is the universe – and evolution – governed by processes which are so “mind-friendly”? However, this would be a fine-tuning (or cosmological) design argument, rather than a biological argument for intelligent design.

    I’d also like to respond to Professor Felsenstein, who wrote:

    The questions are whether in our universe evolution works…. Most evolutionary biologists who feel unprepared to argue about cosmology or where the laws of physics come from will be happy to set aside the issue of what would happen in some other universe, even the average other universe. Ours may be special, but it is the one that contains the phenomena that we are arguing about.

    I have no problem with a biologist adopting that position, as a scientist. As I’ve acknowledged, the problem of why evolution works in our universe is not a biological one. Physics and mathematics can tell us that it’s a surprising fact, and philosophy can be used to argue for the most reasonable explanation of that fact. But if most scientists don’t wish to pursue that avenue of inquiry, that’s fine by me.

    I’d like to thank Glen Davidson for his remarks in post #26 above. I’ll address a few specific comments:

    We here who actually care about science know very well that evolution isn’t “smarter than us” like a deep-learning algorithm might be, or it wouldn’t do the very stupid things that it does.

    Thanks for acknowledging that evolution isn’t like a deep-learning algorithm.

    Are GAs (EAs, whatever) “smarter than us”? Yes, they are, in that they can certainly come up with solutions that,. basically, no one (including the very bright) would ever do in a reasonable period of time. I’m not interested in whether or not teams thinking for unreasonable periods of time ever could come up with the same thing (probably not in many cases, but ruling things out is hard to do).

    OK. So you seem to be rejecting premise 1a of my argument above, which states: “Deep-learning algorithms are the only ones that could be said to be ‘smarter’ than we are, at solving certain problems.” As I said, I don’t know a lot about GAs, but I’ll take your word for it. You continue:

    Are GAs dumber than us? Yes, like evolution they don’t see very far beyond inherited knowledge. It’s well-understood that human smarts are usually better at coming up with the more fundamental ideas in design, while GAs and/or EAs can fiddle with complex details.

    You seem to be making a point very similar to Axe’s: that evolution can fiddle, but it can’t innovate. So what you’re really saying is that the “designoid” structures we find in living things, which far exceed in sophistication anything that our best scientists could come up with, are not the product of any fundamental innovations, but are merely the result of a very long succession of “fiddlings” (I notice that you don’t think evolution even deserves to be called a tinkerer). That’s a claim I’m rather skeptical of, and I think the onus is on evolutionists to provide supporting evidence. (I don’t wish to deny the evidence for “fiddling” in molecular machines: the bacterial flagellum is an obvious example. Even here, though, “fiddling” can explain only so much: it turns out that the flagellum has an essential core of 20-odd proteins, found in all bacteria that contain the flagellum. See http://www.discovery.org/a/24481 .)

    Finally, you discuss Orgel’s Second Rule:

    Was that what Orgel was claiming? … He said evolution’s smarter than you, presumably meaning that it comes up with solutions that you wouldn’t expect. An adage, a proverb, as in, don’t expect evolution to be limited by your imagination.

    That sounds like a reasonable interpretation of Orgel. The real issue, then, is whether evolution is capable of producing “designoid” structures, of jaw-dropping complexity, exhibiting a high degree of functional coherence, via a tinkering process.

  2. vjtorley: We here who actually care about science know very well that evolution isn’t “smarter than us” like a deep-learning algorithm might be, or it wouldn’t do the very stupid things that it does.

    Thanks for acknowledging that evolution isn’t like a deep-learning algorithm.

    It wasn’t exactly new, that’s where I ended up in my very first comment. It’s not too difficult to realize that evolution’s little like a pattern-detecting program that preserves knowledge across the generations, even if there may be some aspects of organisms that might reflect some such information. That would be piecemeal, at best.

    vjtorley: OK. So you seem to be rejecting premise 1a of my argument above, which states: “Deep-learning algorithms are the only ones that could be said to be ‘smarter’ than we are, at solving certain problems.” As I said, I don’t know a lot about GAs, but I’ll take your word for it. You continue:

    I don’t know where premise 1a ever came from, or what justification there would be for it.

    You seem to be making a point very similar to Axe’s: that evolution can fiddle, but it can’t innovate.

    Now see this is where I run into problems with IDists. From whence this dichotomy? I didn’t say or imply that it can’t innovate, it seems quite obvious that it can innovate by “fiddling,” by shifting nucleotides and amino acids in a way that changes function quite dramatically over time. GAs are typically thought to be quite capable of the machine-equivalent of “innovation,” they’re just not going to think, any more than we see the (truly obvious, anyway) results of thought in organisms.

    So what you’re really saying is that the “designoid” structures we find in living things, which far exceed in sophistication anything that our best scientists could come up with, are not the product of any fundamental innovations, but are merely the result of a very long succession of “fiddlings” (I notice that you don’t think evolution even deserves to be called a tinkerer).

    No, I did not call organismic structures “designoid” or imply any such thing. A quibble? No, I object to the linguistic leaps that are so frequently used in ID to suggest that life is designed, or at least “designoid.” Neither has been demonstrated, and the scare quotes don’t obviously justify any such suggestion, either. Nor did I suggest that life is sophisticated, as that is what we typically use as a modifier for human productions, which actually follow design principles. How is it to refer to life, with its messy processes that typically lack the modularity and (relatively) easy modification that are frequent in human designs? Life is exceedingly complex with maddeningly intertwined effects (you know, sort of like the piecemeal changes expected from evolution), but I can’t say that it’s sophisticated (Bill Gates quotes notwithstanding). Arguably, it’s the opposite, very unsophisticated with the sort of complexity that no designer should produce.

    That’s a claim I’m rather skeptical of, and I think the onus is on evolutionists to provide supporting evidence. (I don’t wish to deny the evidence for “fiddling” in molecular machines: the bacterial flagellum is an obvious example. Even here, though, “fiddling” can explain only so much: it turns out that the flagellum has an essential core of 20-odd proteins, found in all bacteria that contain the flagellum. See http://www.discovery.org/a/24481 .)

    Yes, you were given plenty of evidence, only to turn around and use IDist jargon to suggest that life is “designoid” and sophisticated, when both are highly doubtful uses of those words, particularly in light of the massive evidence of aspects of life that would not be expected from designers. You’ve got kludged pathways built on top of earlier stages of evolution, like the descent of the testes, and bird wing bones fused out of bones that were articulated in terrestrial theropods. You’ve got homologies with fish existing in birds, bats, and pterosaurs, but no homology of flight adaptations.

    So the evidence is there, I just can’t make you address it, let alone explain it via design.

    That sounds like a reasonable interpretation of Orgel. The real issue, then, is whether evolution is capable of producing “designoid” structures, of jaw-dropping complexity, exhibiting a high degree of functional coherence, via a tinkering process.

    The real issue is that we have the evidence that it did, and you simply slip back into ID rhetoric about “‘designoid’ structures,” the tiresome complexity matter (indeed, life is probably too complex to point to a designer, most notably where modification of ancient forms yields more complex pathways and structures than one would expect of good design–and that would not be retained by any reasonable designer at all, like all of the bits of bone that are fused into rigid wing bones in birds), and the kind of coherence that, you know, is necessary for life as we know it to persist (as in, begging the question). You could deal with the facts, or you can keep on spinning IDist rhetoric.

    Glen Davidson

  3. Mung: Been there, done that. iirc, Joe appealed to an infinite selection coefficient to support the claim that selection could overcome drift in small population sizes.

    Yeah, that moron Joe just doesn’t know shit about population genetics. You must be recalling correctly. There’s no other explanation.

  4. John Harshman:

    Mung:

    John Harshman: If you want the actual math, you should talk to Joe Felsenstein or some other population geneticist.

    Been there, done that. iirc, Joe appealed to an infinite selection coefficient to support the claim that selection could overcome drift in small population sizes.

    Yeah, that moron Joe just doesn’t know shit about population genetics. You must be recalling correctly. There’s no other explanation.

    Well, I did say that the Weasel program had, in effect, infinitely strong selection, since it always chooses the “fittest” of the offspring.

    If Mung can show a quote from me where I say that the reason that selection is effective in natural populations is that selection is infinitely strong, I’ll be quite ready to apologize here.

    The rule for when selection shows some effectiveness in the face of genetic drift is that the selection coefficient is large enough that $4Ns > 1$. It shows much more noticeable effects when $Ns > 1$. So in a population whose size $N$ is 100, $s > 0.01$ will have very noticeable effects.

    But 100 is a ridiculously small population size (or effective population size) for real species. Some are that small, but those are mostly on the way to extinction. Has Mung ever been chased by a cloud of moquitoes? Has Mung ever considered how many squirrels there are in Seattle? In Washington State? In North America? How many barnacles there are in 1 mile of shoreline?

    In a population of size 1,000,000 selection will be effective for selection coefficients greater than 0.000001.

  5. John Harshman: Yeah, that moron Joe just doesn’t know shit about population genetics. You must be recalling correctly. There’s no other explanation.

    And the great irony in this is ID guys are suckers for credentials.

    You guys remember that time when Mung, expert in.. nothing at all, took 2 minutes with one of the worlds foremost experts in population genetics to render the whole thing absurd? Me neither.

  6. Hi Glen Davidson,

    I’ll be brief, as I’m heading off to work. You seem to take exception to my use of the term “‘designoid’ structures,” but actually I got the term “designoid” from Richard Dawkins, who contrasts it with “designed” (which would indeed be question-begging were I to use that term). Jerry Coyne often used the term “designoid,” too. Cheers.

  7. vjtorley:
    Hi Glen Davidson,

    I’ll be brief, as I’m heading off to work. You seem to take exception to my use of the term“‘designoid’ structures,” but actually I got the term “designoid” from Richard Dawkins, who contrasts it with “designed” (which would indeed be question-begging were I to use that term). Jerry Coyne often used the term “designoid,” too. Cheers.

    Yes, I’ve seen that Dawkins uses the term, but I’ve never thought it to be a reasonable term, for various reasons. Dawkins always seems to have thought that Paley’s argument was so very good pre-Darwin, yet it wasn’t well accepted among biologists even before there was a good evolutionary theory, and Dawkins seems to be given to some egregious question-begging.

    Neither Dawkins nor Coyne speaks for me, and I’ll wait for some good evidence before I accept anything like “designoid” for life. It’s really not at all difficult to differentiate between life and designed things at this point, from the rational manner in which design occurs, to the fact that most designed things have evident purpose, while no wild-type life does.

    I am sorry that Dawkins and Coyne think as badly about the matter as they do, but that does nothing to cause me to accept such sloppy thought.

    Glen Davidson

  8. I think I’m just repeating what others have said above but …

    3. The evolutionary “search” (or sampling procedure) doesn’t appear to belong to this special class of mathematical problems, as it fails the first condition: it cannot be exhaustively described by a set of simple equations involving variables raised to a low power (four or less), as the laws of physics can.

    Wait a second … isn’t it the problem that is being solved that might be “exhaustively described by a set of simple equations”? It is not the search algorithm that we are checking to see what equations describe it. Many evolutionary “problems” have rather smooth fitness surfaces whose shape can be well-approximated by rather simple functions.

    4. Hence there is no reason to believe that “evolution is smarter than you are,” when searching for proteins that fold up and are capable of performing a useful biological task – or more generally, creating a biological system which is functionally coherent, such as photosystem I, or the visual system (described in Douglas Axe’s book, Undeniable).

    I agree. Evolution is often not “smarter than you are”. Sometimes it surprises you, which is all Orgel is saying. Sometimes you can see, by analyzing the situation, a solution further away that evolution can’t see. In the simple case of a locus with two alleles that show underdominance, evolution may fix one allele when we can see that the better solution would be to fix the other one.

    Evolution is not a whole lot “smarter” than a simple hill-climbing “greedy algorithm”. In finite populations it does a somewhat stochastic search too, rather like simulated annealing does when the “temperature” is rather low. It can also sometimes have local populations that find better solutions. But sometimes gene flow from the other populations drags the local population back off that adaptive peak. It’s just not all that smart, but sometimes it finds answers that surprise us because we were less smart than that. The idea that evolution is always capable of being smarter than a “deep learning” algorithm seems unjustified to me.

    As for maintaining “functional coherence”, though, that is one thing evolution is really good at. Because each proposed genotype gets tested as to how everything functions together. If it doesn’t, fitness gets hammered. One doesn’t need some special algorithm to maintain “functional coherence”.

  9. Part of the “smarter” anthropomorphism is just frustration that varmints and unwanted microbes keep evolving around our defences and medicines.

  10. Hi Professor Felsenstein,

    Thank you for your helpful response. You seem to be arguing that while evolution in general may not be smarter than we are, in certain specific situations it can come up with solutions that would never have occurred to us. That’s a much more defensible claim.

    You also write:

    Many evolutionary “problems” have rather smooth fitness surfaces whose shape can be well-approximated by rather simple functions.

    OK. I accept that. But the specific problem I’m talking about here relates to “creating a biological system which is functionally coherent, such as photosystem I, or the visual system (described in Douglas Axe’s book, Undeniable),” as I wrote in step 4 of my argument. You reply that evolution is really good at maintaining “functional coherence,” and I’m quite sure you’re absolutely right. But maintaining is not the same thing as creating.

    Nor does that task of generating a new layer of functionality in the evolution of photosystem I (three layers deep) or the visual system (nine layers deep) sound like something that can be accomplished by “smooth fitness surfaces whose shape can be well-approximated by rather simple functions.” It seems that a discontinuity of some sort is called for, in generating an evolutionary innovation like that. That’s why I’m not confident of evolution’s ability to come up with clever innovations, in such a situation.

    So here’s the paradox. Photosystem I and the visual system appear fiendishly clever. What we know is that evolution is very good at fiddling or finessing, but rather slow-witted in all other respects. That leaves us with something of a conundrum regarding the origin of these systems. Wouldn’t you agree?

  11. vjtorley: You reply that evolution is really good at maintaining “functional coherence,” and I’m quite sure you’re absolutely right.

    Vj, then what is your definition of evolution? Darwinian evolution? So you believe in evolution, but also believe in some other phenomenon?

  12. Why is no one interested in writing a program that randomly generates sequence and comparing the randomly generated sequence to known proteins?

    Would it just take too long to find a match? But isn’t that the point? The “search space” is simply “hyper-astronomical.” Right petrushka?

    This isn’t off topic, is it? I’m talking actual known proteins, not OOL.

  13. Let us simply note that VJTorley’s original 6 points were about the evolutionary process, something that is relevant after the Origin of Life. It is not irrelevant to discuss these points using examples from much later than the OOL.

    Oh well, goalposts do move around, don’t they?

  14. Joe Felsenstein:
    Let us simply note that VJTorley’s original 6 points were about the evolutionary process, something that is relevant after the Origin of Life.It is not irrelevant to discuss these points using examples from much later than the OOL.

    Oh well, goalposts do move around, don’t they?

    Yes, the goalposts seem to have shifted, but not actually to origin of life. Presumably photosystem I and visual systems wouldn’t truly begin at OOL.

    Yes, I tire of discussing evolution and evidence only to have the demand that very early stuff be explained, especially since they have no explanation and nothing even to guide one toward evidence. After all, we have the same evidence of a high degree of derivation (rather more than one would expect of design) throughout life, and difficulty is no excuse for invoking miracles design. So I consider it to be the kind of shift that isn’t warranted by anything.

    But however much the goalposts may have shifted, it doesn’t appear to me that they shifted clear back to OOL.

    Glen Davidson

  15. “By the way, the problems I’m interested in are applied, real-world problems.” – vjtorley

    Is that why you teach English language instead of actually doing philosophy, writing and publishing articles that your academic peers, not mainly Protestant fundamentalists and evangelicals defending USAmerican neo-creationist ‘Intelligent Design’ ideology at online forums, would read? ; )

    Is it time for another IDtheFuture podcast, Vincent, to show evangelicals in Japan that you’re fighting some kind of good ‘IDist theology’ neo-creationist fight? Zoom out, Vincent, and see why there’s a credibility issue involved here. Self-identifying oneself as an ALLY with the Discovery Institute doesn’t by itself establish the DI’s ‘strictly scientific’ claims for IDism. But Torley has IDism so tightly intertwined with his theology, that letting go may seem like an impossibility. This is why he broke contact with me at UD; Torley can’t separate his IDism from his personal theology.

    Sure, Torley moves the goalposts because he can in Japan. Otherwise, one would really tell Torley’s colours if one put him in a room with fellow Aussie Ken Ham. It is not clear to me who is more fanatical in the name of head-in-sand evangelicalism; Torley or Ham. Torley just has a teaching job instead of full-time neo-creationist-IDist ministry.

    If Torley really wants to actually face “applied, real-world problems” he would tender his language teacher resignation today and resume academic work. Yes, that move would be hard and show Torley’s courage of conviction. It does not seem, however, like doing so would qualify as ‘Intelligent Design’ to Torley.

  16. Hi Gregory,

    I find your remarks bizarre. The reason why I teach English in Japan and not philosophy is quite simple: demand and supply. I have a family to feed. Lots of people in Japan want to learn English. No-one in Japan has even heard of Intelligent Design, and no-one seems to be interested in the subject. What’s more, getting a permanent job at a Japanese university is not easy. I’ve learned from experience that it’s not wise to put all your eggs in one basket – which is why I have about half a dozen teaching jobs.

    The reason why I “broke contact” with you at UD was because you kept implying that I was a heretic – an accusation I find offensive.

    You compare me to Ken Ham. I have no idea why. Ham is a special creationist who believes in a 6,000-year-old Earth. I believe in a 13.798-billion-year-old universe and in common descent. I recently wrote a post that was deleted from UD, and I haven’t written any posts there since then. While I’m inclined to believe that the first living thing was created, I’m not dogmatic about it. I believe that evolution was guided, but I’ve also argued that attempts to prove ID mathematically are invalid, in the light of what we currently know.

    Why, then, do you accuse me of being a religious fanatic? This is beyond bizarre. It’s ridiculous.

  17. Hi Glen Davidson,

    Thank you for your vote of support. The visual system illustrated on page 177 of Douglas Axe’s book, “Undeniable,” arose far later than the origin of life: probably around 500 million years ago (give or take), compared to 4 billion years ago for the origin of life. I hardly think that counts as shifting the goalposts back to OOL.

    If you want to refute my design argument, then I suggest you follow up on the advice I gave in my online review of Axe’s book:

    If Darwinism is correct, then I would expect that if scientists examined bacteria and drew up hierarchical organization diagrams for all of the functionally coherent systems that they identified in bacteria, they would find that these hierarchies had a minimum depth of say, three levels (like the one for the photosynthetic system in cyanobacteria). Beyond that point, however, I would expect the number of systems at higher levels to taper off dramatically: thus there should be exponentially fewer four-level hierarchies than three-level hierarchies, and likewise, far fewer five-level hierarchies than four-level hierarchies, and so on. For eukaryotes and in particular, for multicellular organisms and especially, plants and animals, I’d expect the minimum threshold for hierarchies to be higher than for bacteria (maybe five or six levels), but once again, I’d expect the number to decline exponentially for higher levels. But if life were designed, there would be no reason to expect that. Would someone like to start counting?

    I find it absolutely astonishing that in the 21st century, no-one has bothered to make an inventory of these complex systems in living things, so that we can see if the numbers taper off in the way a Darwinist would predict. However, that situation can surely be rectified. Any takers?

  18. vjtorley,

    But you have ready responded to Joe that you believe in some kind of evolution.

    So what do you mean by that, what evolution?

  19. vjtorley:
    Hi Glen Davidson,

    Thank you for your vote of support. The visual system illustrated on page 177 of Douglas Axe’s book, “Undeniable,” arose far later than the origin of life: probably around 500 million years ago (give or take), compared to 4 billion years ago for the origin of life. I hardly think that counts as shifting the goalposts back to OOL.

    If you want to refute my design argument, then I suggest you follow up on the advice I gave in my online review of Axe’s book:

    Why not make a design argument? I mean, real evidence of design, not your attempts to claim design from complexity, or hierarchies, or what-not. Why don’t you explain why flight adaptations in vertebrates aren’t homologous even though other aspects of those vertebrates are, why bird wing bones are fused out of ancestrally-articulated bones? Why is life extremely derivative like we’d expect of unguided evolution, not like actual designed objects?

    I’m really not interested in whatever you decided “Darwinism” must do, since you never have justified such claims, and whether or not they exist has nothing to do with the lack of any meaningful evidence for design that dogs design claims.

    I find it absolutely astonishing that in the 21st century, no-one has bothered to make an inventory of these complex systems in living things, so that we can see if the numbers taper off in the way a Darwinist would predict. However, that situation can surely be rectified. Any takers?

    First off, there’s a great deal of evidence of evolution without intelligent intervention. You keep on ignoring this fact, ignoring the actual evidence that life evolved and was not designed. You move the goalposts to some sketchy claims about what “Darwinism would predict” rather than dealing with the evidence. Secondly, you’ve never provided legitimate evidence for design. At all. Once again showing that ID is without any basis, trying to knock down evolutionary theory while illegitimately supposing that ID is the default. And thirdly, no, you really don’t get to decide what “Darwinism would predict” without any basis for that. I haven’t a clue why you think that anyone should follow your dictates in this matter.

    Evidence for ID, please. And for once, deal with the fact that life has endless evidence of mindless adaptation of older forms and processes rather than of some brilliant mind at work. I know that it’s easier to shift the goalposts away from what you have never explained to new–if hardly comprehensible–demands for “Darwinism” to explain, but that leaves your claims of design as lacking in meaningful evidence as before, and it implies that you’re not capable of explaining the evidence that evolutionary theory does. Will ID ever be treated by its proponents as if it were an explanatory theory, rather than as apologetics that tries to knock out real explanations without ever producing any itself?

    Glen Davidson

  20. I too would be interested in a theory of design. Vince Torley is apparently a theistic evolutionist, and it’s unclear in what way the evidence left behind by his idea of design would differ from what would be expected from naturalistic evolution. Vince, perhaps you could explain. How do divine innovations arise? As single mutations in individuals? As fiat transformations of whole populations? And what sort of mutations are we looking for? Entire protein complexes and their coding DNA poofed out of nowhere, or something more gradual? The less the process can be distinguished from natural evolution, the less ability we would have to detect it.

  21. vjtorley: Hi Gregory,
    I find your remarks bizarre….Why, then, do you accuse me of being a religious fanatic? This is beyond bizarre. It’s ridiculous.

    That’s our Gregory! That’s why we love him. 🙂

  22. Hi Glen Davidson,

    Thank you for your post. Let me be quite clear: I fully accept that the vast majority of evolutionary changes do not require any special guidance. Neutral and deleterious mutations (which comprise the bulk of the mutations we observe in Nature) certainly don’t, and neither do most beneficial mutations, which are simply cases of evolution refining an existing function. I’m even willing to grant, on the basis of experimental evidence which I cited in my review of Axe’s book, that natural selection is capable of giving rise to new functions.

    What we also observe in Nature, however, are functions piggybacking on other functions, which in turn piggyback on yet other functions, like a human pyramid. In my review, I cited the visual system, which is nine layers deep. I also described photosystem I:

    In cyanobacteria, this system contains “twelve protein parts and six smaller parts called cofactors, one of which (chlorophyll a) is used 288 times to build the whole photosystem” (p. 169). The cofactors have to be held in their precise positions by the protein framework. Altogether, photosystem I contains a staggering 417 pieces, each of which has to be in just the right place, in order to carry out the function of gathering the sun’s photons and converting their energy into chemical energy (p. 169). And photosystem I is just one of many components that make up the whole photosynthetic system of a cyanobacterium.

    What I am saying is that we currently lack a Darwinian explanation (and only a Darwinian one will do, in this case, if you believe evolution is wholly unguided) for how multi-layered, exquisitely sensitive functional coherence can arise. I am also saying that when the sophistication of the functionally coherent systems we observe far exceeds anything that our best scientists are capable of coming up with, the inference to a super-intelligent designer is a reasonable one, in the light of what we currently know.

    You say that’s not “legitimate evidence.” I think Richard Dawkins would disagree with you. Dawkins has written that he cannot “imagine anyone being an atheist at any time before 1859,” and he takes Paley’s design argument very seriously in his book, The Blind Watchmaker. And in Henry Fairfield Osborn’s series of essays, Evolution and Religion (1924), Osborn writes: “Huxley once told me that Paley’s argument for the direct handiwork of the Creator was so logically, so ingeniously and convincingly written that he always kept it at his bedside for last reading at night.” No-one doubts that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection can account for many cases of apparent design in Nature. The question that needs to be addressed is whether it can account for all of them, or whether there are some forms of functional complexity which are beyond the reach of unguided evolution.

    So far, I have seen no evidence that unguided evolutionary processes are capable of generating multi-layered functional coherence. I’m inclined to think that a Designer brought about these changes somehow (and not being super-intelligent myself, it’s hardly surprising that I don’t know how). I may, of course, be mistaken. But please don’t accuse me of having supplied no evidence for design. I have.

    You also ask me to explain the fact that “life has endless evidence of mindless adaptation of older forms and processes rather than of some brilliant mind at work.” I see no reason why a designer should not be happy to leave the mindless process of adaptation to natural selection, if he/she so wishes.

    Finally, I want to be clear that guided evolution need not require Deus ex machina interventions in the course of history. Extreme fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the universe at the beginning of time could conceivably produce a similar result. For my part, I am fairly agnostic about the designer’s modus operandi. I don’t know, for instance, whether acts of design are manifested in the form of single mutations in individuals or in an entire population. I’m more interested in distinguishing cases of design from cases of non-design. That’s our first task.

    John Harshman argues that “[t]he less the [design – VJT] process can be distinguished from natural evolution, the less ability we would have to detect it.” That’s a fair point. What I’m saying is that at the level of the process (e.g. a mutation), we might not be easily able to distinguish the two: at the biochemical level, an act of design may look like just another mutation. But if the mutation in question is one which solves multiple problems at once, in terms of co-ordinating various existing functions while creating a new one which piggybacks on top of them, it’s fair to ask if that mutation was rigged to occur. And if we observed a sharp boundary in Nature between cases of multi-layered functional coherence and cases where natural selection is observed to give rise to simple new functions, then that would tend to confirm my suggestion that the two are quite distinct, and that the former are the product of design.

  23. vjtorley: What I am saying is that we currently lack a Darwinian explanation (and only a Darwinian one will do, in this case, if you believe evolution is wholly unguided) for how multi-layered, exquisitely sensitive functional coherence can arise. I am also saying that when the sophistication of the functionally coherent systems we observe far exceeds anything that our best scientists are capable of coming up with, the inference to a super-intelligent designer is a reasonable one, in the light of what we currently know.

    Well, if you think “functional coherence” far exceeds the capabilities of Darwinian evolution, why not infer… wait for it… Super-Mega-Darwinian-Evolution?

    Now seriously, how does a “Super Intelligence” design something and then produces it using a process that doesn’t work on it’s own to produce what it was designed for? What would that “guidance” mean in terms of observable evidence?

    And the question I’ve been asking all IDists here that are not dumb enough to question universal common descent: if there’s this limitation to descent with modification so that it can’t produce complex systems (functional coherence or whatever) but you find the evidence for common descent undeniable, did this functional coherence appear in one fell swoop? Were invertebrates giving birth to vertebrates all of a sudden?

    Seriously, let’s talk reality, the options are:

    1. Gradual change producing “functional coherence” one little step a a time by descent with modification, completely indistinguishable from evolution.
    2. Special creation, (some) species poofed into existence fully formed)
    3. Dogs giving birth to cats

  24. vjtorley: John Harshman argues that “[t]he less the [design – VJT] process can be distinguished from natural evolution, the less ability we would have to detect it.” That’s a fair point. What I’m saying is that at the level of the process (e.g. a mutation), we might not be easily able to distinguish the two: at the biochemical level, an act of design may look like just another mutation. But if the mutation in question is one which solves multiple problems at once, in terms of co-ordinating various existing functions while creating a new one which piggybacks on top of them, it’s fair to ask if that mutation was rigged to occur. And if we observed a sharp boundary in Nature between cases of multi-layered functional coherence and cases where natural selection is observed to give rise to simple new functions, then that would tend to confirm my suggestion that the two are quite distinct, and that the former are the product of design.

    Do we observe such a sharp boundary? Have you looked? And if we did, wouldn’t that falsify your proposed mechanism of setting the initial conditions and letting the universe play out?

    I really think you need to flesh out your theory of design to the point where someone who is not you can know what you’re proposing. The hints you provide seem in many cases mutually contradictory, and that’s a problem. In particular, “initial conditions” and “act of design” are incompatible. In the second case, you seem to be proposing single mutations in individuals, but you also seem to be proposing that the single mutations may consist of the simultaneous injection of sequences for a great number of coordinated proteins. Perhaps you should think about this a bit more before posting again.

  25. vjtorley: I don’t know, for instance, whether acts of design are manifested in the form of single mutations in individuals or in an entire population. I’m more interested in distinguishing cases of design from cases of non-design. That’s our first task.

    How can one distinguishing cases of “design” from cases of “non-design” without knowing how that design is supposed to work? And how can “design” be an explanation at all when you can’t tell us anything at all about how “design” produces functional complexity or even the simplest aspect of a living form? That’s no explanation, how can you infer “design” as the best explanation if it’s no explanation at all?

    vjtorley: But please don’t accuse me of having supplied no evidence for design. I have.

    And how does one present evidence for something that doesn’t explain anything at all?

  26. dazz doesn’t know what evidence for design would look like, but he knows it didn’t happen.

  27. vjtorley:
    Hi Glen Davidson,

    Thank you for your post. Let me be quite clear: I fully accept that the vast majority of evolutionary changes do not require any special guidance. Neutral and deleterious mutations (which comprise the bulk of the mutations we observe in Nature) certainly don’t, and neither do most beneficial mutations, which are simply cases of evolution refining an existing function. I’m even willing to grant, on the basis of experimental evidence which I cited in my review of Axe’s book, that natural selection is capable of giving rise to new functions.

    The trouble with this sort of reasoning is, of course, confirmation bias. Fine, let’s suppose that there may be things that happen without intervention or exquisitely careful planning that doesn’t require intervention per se, and then there are the kinds of things that require a superintelligent being in some capacity stepping in to cause them to happen.

    First, why would one suppose so? Some things are difficult to explain? But surely that can’t be a reliable means of distinguishing between what was “designed” and what was not, because clearly we might not know some of the more difficult steps of evolution (GAs can lead to surprising results, by analogy) since we simply might not know what happened–especially in the very distant past. But maybe there are breaks where there was intervention, or some unusual events planned by the superintelligent being. OK, now that might support the idea that design was in some way responsible in those cases. So is the visual system really separate from the course of evolution, having a substantial influx of new proteins and capabilities? The thing is, not really, for although there may be some proteins that only show up there, many proteins are shared, and there’s no obvious point at which new DNA is injected, or some such thing.

    So we’re stymied in finding the kinds of breaks that actually might indicate an intervention (or surprising complex preplanned development), so how are we not stuck back at the problem that we have nothing but confirmation bias to decide that design was responsible for some features and not others? From genetics and the derivative nature of, well, pretty much everything in life we just have some difficult-to-explain features, and some not so hard to explain. We get to just decide that the difficult features were designed, while the other features were not?

    Well, what’s the justification for such a conclusion, other than that one really wants the difficult-to-explain features to be designed? It’s a possibility, to be sure, but why wouldn’t design produce accidental features that differ from evolutionary processes–as is our present-day experience? There ought to be something beside the fact that some features are difficult to explain that would indicate design, because otherwise “design” is indistinguishable from lazy confirmation bias.

    What we also observe in Nature, however, are functions piggybacking on other functions, which in turn piggyback on yet other functions, like a human pyramid.

    Yes, of course they do. How else would evolution change things? It can’t start anew, adapting pre-existing features is its primary process for affecting change.

    In my review, I cited the visual system, which is nine layers deep. I also described photosystem I:

    Yes, what else would one expect from evolution? A close homolog of photosystem I exists in green sulfur bacteria. But hydrogen sulfide is much easier to split off protons from than from water, plus in oxygenic photosynthesis it all has to be coupled to photosystem II (which appears to have evolved from photosystem I), so there has be substantial change from H2S reduction to H2O reduction. Then too, the (homolog of) photosystem I in the green sulfur bacteria almost certainly had a considerable evolutionary history as well, probably with layers added on top of it after it evolved (as it may have, no one is sure) to expel protons from the cell. Yes, layers of evolutionary history.

    Here’s a discussion of how the photosystems may have arisen. Much conjecture, to be sure, but at least it’s based on actual data

    What I am saying is that we currently lack a Darwinian explanation (and only a Darwinian one will do, in this case, if you believe evolution is wholly unguided) for how multi-layered, exquisitely sensitive functional coherence can arise.

    So that’s it, is it? A difficult problem, with no obvious break from evolutionary processes and evidence, becomes “evidence” for design? If it’s easy enough, fine, evolutionary processes with all of the expected evidence explain it, and if it’s hard, design, along with all of the evidence expected of evolution, explains it. I fail to see how this isn’t simply a matter of confirmation bias.

    I am also saying that when the sophistication of the functionally coherent systems we observe far exceeds anything that our best scientists are capable of coming up with, the inference to a super-intelligent designer is a reasonable one, in the light of what we currently know.

    How, why? You decided that evolutionary processes can’t do it, didn’t find any good evidence of rational intervention (or exquisitely preplanned “sophistication” rising seemingly de novo), and so it’s due to intelligence? You’re not demanding much of your hypothesis, merely that evolution fails in your eyes.

    You say that’s not “legitimate evidence.” I think Richard Dawkins would disagree with you.

    Of course he doesn’t disagree with me. Do you think he’s an IDist? But so what if he were? I’m not Dawkins, and I fault his thinking in more than one area (including at least some of his atheist claptrap).

    Dawkins has written that he cannot “imagine anyone being an atheist at any time before 1859,” and he takes Paley’s design argument very seriously in his book, The Blind Watchmaker.

    Yes, I’ve read Paley, as well as the section where Dawkins “argues” that Paley’s argument was a good one in its day. What did Hume say? Is Dawkins somehow the authority on this because he agrees with you that at least pre-1859 it was a good argument? What about all of the pre-1859 biologists who thought it was pretty useless and looked for other options, especially evolutionary ones? Why did Coleridge complain about all of the evolutionary theories floating around in the early 19th century?

    And in Henry Fairfield Osborn’s series of essays, Evolution and Religion (1924), Osborn writes: “Huxley once told me that Paley’s argument for the direct handiwork of the Creator was so logically, so ingeniously and convincingly written that he always kept it at his bedside for last reading at night.”

    Well, too bad for Huxley. I thought it looked like quite a lot of bluster when I read it, since he relied on some rather mechanical “designs” in life that are only rather superficially like designed objects. At least he did what you and other IDists don’t do, which is to actually relate organs to designed structures and to say that they are similar, thus design. Like I said, though, it’s rather superficial, and of course he’s no more concerned with his confirmation bias than you seem to be about yours.

    No-one doubts that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection can account for many cases of apparent design in Nature.

    What apparent design?

    The question that needs to be addressed is whether it can account for all of them, or whether there are some forms of functional complexity which are beyond the reach of unguided evolution.

    Actually, the question that ID needs to address is whether or not it can find any kind of evidence for design. Paley was way ahead of you epistemologically–although pretty fuzzy on the evidence–for he claimed to have the evidence that would indicate an architect or an artificer. You don’t really bother with evidence for design at all.

    So far, I have seen no evidence that unguided evolutionary processes are capable of generating multi-layered functional coherence.

    How would evolution generate complex organs that are not multi-layered? And why aren’t you looking for something other than difficulty to indicate that design occurred (aside from the obvious fact that it doesn’t exist)? What is a difficult evolutionary puzzle supposed to look like, except a difficult evolutionary puzzle, yet being very derivative and layering functions on top of older functions? So you take what would indicate that we have a difficult puzzle in evolution and simply assume that to be evidence for design. That is not good reasoning.

    I’m inclined to think that a Designer brought about these changes somehow (and not being super-intelligent myself, it’s hardly surprising that I don’t know how).

    Ah, I see, you don’t know how it occurred, but you can still consider such difficult matters to be evidence for design. To be sure, that could make sense if you actually had confirmatory evidence for design, like rational design solutions (and not the evolutionary layering that we see), because one may be able to identify a process without being able to explicate that process. The trouble is that you simply don’t have any evidence for design, you’re assuming that something that has evidence of evolution but is difficult to explain is evidence of design. It is not.

    I may, of course, be mistaken. But please don’t accuse me of having supplied no evidence for design. I have.

    Why did you drop the modifier “legitimate” in front of “evidence for design”? I added it in edit, because of course I realize that if we did manage to come up with legitimate evidence of design we would retrospectively consider certain things (including, possibly, difficult evolutionary problems) to actually be evidence of design. However, lacking any really good marker for design, while you simply assume that difficult problems for evolutionary theory are in fact evidence for design, leads me to the proper conclusion that you have no legitimate evidence for design.

    You also ask me to explain the fact that “life has endless evidence of mindless adaptation of older forms and processes rather than of some brilliant mind at work.” I see no reason why a designer should not be happy to leave the mindless process of adaptation to natural selection, if he/she so wishes.

    Well, there you go, if you accept that evolution and not intelligence explains it, then that explains it, and if you don’t accept that evolution rather than intelligence explains it, you conclude that intelligence did it. I can see how that might work for you, but I can only consider it to be the fallacy of confirmation bias.

    Finally, I want to be clear that guided evolution need not require Deus ex machina interventions in the course of history. Extreme fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the universe at the beginning of time could conceivably produce a similar result. For my part, I am fairly agnostic about the designer’s modusoperandi.

    If you have no evidence of the proximal causes, or of something like rational intervention (possibly not proximal), how can you rightly suppose that you have evidence of design?

    Did evolutionary theory promise that all of the problems over the course of evolution would be easily solved by evolutionary thinking? If not, why do you suppose that difficult problems in evolution are in fact solved by invoking The Designer?

    I don’t know, for instance, whether acts of design are manifested in the form of single mutations in individuals or in an entire population. I’m more interested in distinguishing cases of design from cases of non-design. That’s our first task.

    Do that, rather than trying to make difficult problems in evolution that are undistinguishable in all other ways into “evidence for design.”

    John Harshman argues that “[t]he less the [design – VJT] process can be distinguished from natural evolution, the less ability we would have to detect it.” That’s a fair point. What I’m saying is that at the level of the process (e.g. a mutation), we might not be easily able to distinguish the two: at the biochemical level, an act of design may look like just another mutation. But if the mutation in question is one which solves multiple problems at once, in terms of co-ordinating various existing functions while creating a new one which piggybacks on top of them, it’s fair to ask if that mutation was rigged to occur.

    Why? Why aren’t you looking for distinguishing marks of design in life, rather than what is indistinguishable from evolutionary results but whose evolutionary steps are difficult to elucidate?

    And if we observed a sharp boundary in Nature between cases of multi-layered functional coherence and cases where natural selection is observed to give rise to simple new functions, then that would tend to confirm my suggestion that the two are quite distinct, and that the former are the product of design.

    There is no sharp boundary, and I don’t know of any “simple new functions” that aren’t layered on top of multi-layered functional coherence.

    Making the “predictions” of ID out to be the same as those of evolution doesn’t save ID, it merely indicates that ID has nothing worthwhile to contribute.

    Glen Davidson

  28. Hi Glen Davidson,

    Thank you for your response. I will try one more time, and then I shall stop writing about evidence for biological design for a while.

    First, if you think I don’t understand Paley’s argument, or if you think that Hume refuted it, then you really need to read this article, which I wrote for Uncommon Descent four years ago. While you’re at it, I would also suggest you have a look at Dr. Robert Koons’ 1998 lecture course on Western Theism – especially lecture 15, which deals with Hume’s critique of the design argument, and exposes its flawed epistemology.

    The problem with multi-layered functional coherence isn’t that it’s “difficult to explain,” as you put it. In fact, there are two problems. The first problem is that it’s liable to fail, in multiple ways. The number of ways in which adding a new layer of functionality to such a system can cause the system to collapse increases dramatically, as the number of layers increases.

    The second problem is that multi-layered functional coherent systems aren’t rough-and-ready kludges, as evolutionary theory would lead us to expect. According to biologist and engineer Stephen Larson, life’s “complex interacting molecular machines” reveal “molecular clockwork is real and pervasive” and appear to be “built by an engineer a million times smarter than” we are (see here). Larson is not an ID proponent, but he admits he finds this fact “unsettling.” Why are these systems so much more elegant than they need to be?

    You write: “If you have no evidence of the proximal causes, or of something like rational intervention (possibly not proximal), how can you rightly suppose that you have evidence of design?”

    This objection cuts no ice with me. As Carl Sagan’s “first 100 primes” and Arthur C. Clarke’s “monolith on the moon” examples show, we don’t need evidence of the proximal causes (or of their modus operandi) in order to legitimately infer design. We don’t need evidence of intervention, either: theoretically, extreme fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the universe could generate any complex structure (including a monolith).

    Still, you may be wondering: how does the existence of multi-layered functional coherent systems constitute legitimate evidence for design?

    I’d like to respond by telling a little story (and a true one, at that). Back in 1974, when I was 13, I moved to a new school. It was my 14th. I was in Grade 9, and I was two years younger than most of the other kids. I soon found that helping other kids with their math assignments made me popular, and helped me avoid being bullied. Our math teacher assessed us on the basis of our performance in an exam (50%) and in our assignments (50%). He was a clever man, and when he compared the distribution of scores for the exam and the assignments, he noticed something funny. The exam scores fell onto a nice, neat Bell curve, as you’d expect. The assignment scores didn’t: they displayed a bimodal distribution, with the bump on the left considerably higher than the bump on the right – something like this. The teacher figured that some kids had been cheating on their assignments, and bumping up their scores in the process. He didn’t point the finger at anyone, but he knew what was happening.

    Let’s go back to functionally coherent systems that we find in Nature. Since the difficulty of building such systems increases as the number of layers increases, then if these systems arose naturally, we’d expect that within each major taxon, if you graphed the number of such systems found in organisms versus the number of layers of functional coherence they exhibited, you’d expect the numbers to taper off rapidly, as the number of layers increased. But if you found a bimodal distribution, with an unexpected increase in frequency for systems with a large number of layers, then you might suspect that the more complex functionally coherent systems were produced by a very clever designer. That kind of pattern would constitute evidence for design, just as the pattern in the assignment scores did.

    Thanks for the paper on photosystems. I’m quite happy to grant that the systems described in the article, which are found in bacteria, chloroplasts, and mitochondria, are all related. However, a genetic relationship in no way negates the evidence for design. Cheers.

  29. vjtorley:
    Hi Glen Davidson,

    Thank you for your response. I will try one more time, and then I shall stop writing about evidence for biological design for a while.

    First, if you think I don’t understand Paley’s argument,

    Why might you suppose that I think that? I noted that Paley argues far more properly (making a case for design, as you do not), but I assumed that you simply know that you’re not going to actually being able to make a case for design, hence you try to make problems of evolution into “evidence for design,” as poor an argument as that is.

    or if you think that Hume refuted it, then you really need to read this article, which I wrote for Uncommon Descent four years ago. While you’re at it, I would also suggest you have a look at Dr. Robert Koons’ 1998 lecture course on Western Theism – especially lecture 15, which deals with Hume’s critique of the design argument, and exposes its flawed epistemology.

    That’s a whole lot about Hume, when all I wrote about Hume was, “What did Hume say? Is Dawkins somehow the authority on this because he agrees with you that at least pre-1859 it was a good argument?” You throw an “authority” at me as if I’m supposed to care, I throw Hume back, as in, why shouldn’t I believe Hume as an authority, if authority is what matters? And you’re off on Hume, as if I really cared about Hume, rather than your lame invocation of “authority.” Try to understand what I write in the context of what I write, not in the context of what you write.

    The problem with multi-layered functional coherence isn’t that it’s “difficult to explain,” as you put it. In fact, there are two problems. The first problem is that it’s liable to fail, in multiple ways. The number of ways in which adding a new layer of functionality to such a system can cause the system to collapse increases dramatically, as the number of layers increases.

    Yes, but that’s also how evolution must make any numbers of things. You’re not making an actual argument, you’re just saying that it’s difficult, so it must be a designer, as if the real problem isn’t that life is likely too complex, with everything just sort of jammed together with no conceptual or actual separations, to ever be credited to some “designer.” Once again, you’re not looking for markers of design (after all, it’s God for you, and you have no real expectations for God), but just that you think it’s too difficult for evolution to do (while you ignore the implications of the evidence for evolution, because God could step into evolution–but you need the evidence that this happened and you don’t have it) without actually knowing why.

    The complexity is overwhelming, but one important factor that you’re ignoring is that life really can take changes rather better than can machines or software, probably in part because it has evolved. One typo can throw off an entire computer program (although newer languages make this less likely), while the information in DNA can be changed in one spot without necessarily affecting much else.

    There is less of the brittleness in life that you want to claim makes “layering” impossible than there is in designed objects. In other words, you really need to quit presupposing that life was designed and has the problems of designed objects, and actually learn about biology and how it operates.

    And even if you were correct about the problems with “layering,” why would I accept that as evidence for “design”? You’re still defending Paley while refusing to do the one thing that he tried to do right, which was to come up with actual evidence for design, rather than supposed evidence against evolution (to be sure, while he hit slightly against some “evolutionary theories,” there was then no scientific evolutionary theory. Nonetheless, he pointedly noted the importance of actually making the case for design, while you run away from that challenge).

    The second problem is that multi-layered functional coherent systems aren’t rough-and-ready kludges, as evolutionary theory would lead us to expect.

    Sorry, you’re just making up what you want evolutionary theory to predict. The point of evolution is that it is the millstone of the gods, while it grinds slowly, it grinds exceedingly finely. Assuming that there is a smooth evolutionary slope (very common, it appears), it will take the kludges with which it begins (a carpal bone in a panda’s wrist, say) and hone them to very elegant organs (how the panda’s thumb works today for dealing with bamboo). You don’t get to make up evolution and design according to your whims, you know.

    According to biologist and engineer Stephen Larson, life’s “complex interacting molecular machines” reveal “molecular clockwork is real and pervasive” and appear to be “built by an engineer a million times smarter than” we are (see here). Larson is not an ID proponent, but he admits he finds this fact “unsettling.” Why are these systems so much more elegant than they need to be?

    Because they’re more efficient that way. Do you ever pay attention to what evolution is actually about?

    GAs are especially about honing the kludgy and second-rate into finely-wrought elegant structures, originally using evolutionary processes as their inspiration.

    Plus, we’re back to the old problem that design is just what you think is difficult or against your incorrect IDist preconceptions of evolution. How do you know that something is designed, except that it doesn’t fit your preconceptions? You don’t know, you’re not trying like Paley did to find actual evidence of design, you’re just of the opinion that evolution can’t do some things that your IDist preconceptions (that life is like machines, hence brittle to change like they are) tell you they can’t, and voila, you conclude design. It won’t do.

    You write: “If you have no evidence of the proximal causes, or of something like rational intervention (possibly not proximal), how can you rightly suppose that you have evidence of design?”

    This objection cuts no ice with me. As Carl Sagan’s “first 100 primes” and Arthur C. Clarke’s “monolith on the moon” examples show, we don’t need evidence of the proximal causes (or of their modus operandi) in order to legitimately infer design.

    That’s why I included the other, the point being that you need some kind of demarcating evidence, which we never get from your side.

    We don’t need evidence of intervention, either: theoretically, extreme fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the universe could generate any complex structure (including a monolith).

    Oh please, it was just shorthand for saying that you have to give us something. I’m not interested in all of your ways of avoiding that requirement, word-lawyering and the like. If you object to the shorthand I used there, replace it with some meaningful sort of evidence you can provide for design. That is pointedly lacking.

    Still, you may be wondering: how does the existence of multi-layered functional coherent systems constitute legitimate evidence for design?

    Not really, as you’ve never even gotten around to the implications of the fact that evidence of evolution includes the layering of later functions overtop of earlier ones. You can’t take evidence for evolution and turn it into evidence for design just because you won’t consider the implications of the evidence involved.

    I’d like to respond by telling a little story (and a true one, at that). Back in 1974, when I was 13, I moved to a new school. It was my 14th. I was in Grade 9, and I was two years younger than most of the other kids. I soon found that helping other kids with their math assignments made me popular, and helped me avoid being bullied. Our math teacher assessed us on the basis of our performance in an exam (50%) and in our assignments (50%). He was a clever man, and when he compared the distribution of scores for the exam and the assignments, he noticed something funny. The exam scores fell onto a nice, neat Bell curve, as you’d expect. The assignment scores didn’t: they displayed a bimodal distribution, with the bump on the left considerably higher than the bump on the right – something like this. The teacher figured that some kids had been cheating on their assignments, and bumping up their scores in the process. He didn’t point the finger at anyone, but he knew what was happening.

    Let’s go back to functionally coherent systems that we find in Nature. Since the difficulty of building such systems increases as the number of layers increases, then if these systems arose naturally, we’d expect that within each major taxon, if you graphed the number of such systems found in organisms versus the number of layers of functional coherence they exhibited, you’d expect the numbers to taper off rapidly, as the number of layers increased.

    Do you know how many unwarranted assumptions you have included in there? First off, how difficult is it to build upon these systems? You don’t know, apparently you think it’s very difficult because you’re thinking of life as if it were designed and designed systems tend to be brittle in that way. Essentially, you’re assuming that life didn’t evolve in a rather more plastic manner that persists (or if it doesn’t, likely it goes extinct). You have no justification for doing so.

    You need evidence that such layering in evolved systems is as difficult as you say, and you don’t have it.

    Secondly, and because of your unwarranted assumptions above, you assume that layers depend upon time, since you suppose they take an inordinate amount of time to appear. But because life is seemingly far more plastic than IDists assume (not knowing biology well, in general), it seems far more likely that layering on top of systems frequently comes from evolutionary shifts, such as moving from water to land or vice versa, or maybe as a result of pathogenic stress.

    Thirdly, why would designed systems be built by layering later adaptations on top of earlier ones in the first place? That’s what evolution does. It appears evident to me that any designer can just avoid dealing with fish genes in birds, while evolution cannot do that. So you’re trying to take what is entailed by evolution and claim it for design. I fail to see anything but enthusiasm for your preferred beliefs as causal for that response.

    But if you found a bimodal distribution, with an unexpected increase in frequency for systems with a large number of layers, then you might suspect that the more complex functionally coherent systems were produced by a very clever designer.

    If I accepted your premises, maybe. As it is, I would look for evolutionary reasons to shift the end results of development. That kind of thing. You know, what actually is the case.

    That kind of pattern would constitute evidence for design, just as the pattern in the assignment scores did.

    Only if you knew that there was some designer that might do such a thing. If you don’t know that, how could you make such an inference? Assuming it was skewed from normal evolutionary expectations as well, all we would yet know is that it is a skew, and would have to consider various possibilities. You’re not exactly making a solid cause and effect case here.

    I would note that while analogies are generally not exact, there is a serious defect in your analogy when applying it to life. For, if there is a strong skew in assignment scores, you know that you are dealing with humans and human production (finished assignments), hence you immediately expect a human cause for the skew in assignment scores. In biology we have no reason to expect a human cause for a skew in most of its operations (anthrax strains, their toxicity, and their resistance to antibiotics, being one exception), let alone for The Designer causing a skew in any biologic operations whatsoever.

    Thanks for the paper on photosystems. I’m quite happy to grant that the systems described in the article, which are found in bacteria, chloroplasts, and mitochondria, are all related. However, a genetic relationship in no way negates the evidence for design. Cheers.

    Why, because design could be anything? Granted, in a sense that’s true, but until you have some closely argued sort of cause and effect justification there’s hardly any reason to suppose that there is design where there is evidence for evolution.

    Glen Davidson

  30. “I have a family to feed. Lots of people in Japan want to learn English.” – vjtorley

    Yes, that’s obvious. I taught in (South) Korea. Been there, as they say, right Vincent? 😉

    “No-one in Japan has even heard of Intelligent Design” – vjtorley

    Wrong, and I told you this and provided names perhaps 3 years ago. Will you say it after learning again that Dr. Joseph Poulshock was an affiliated Fellow with the Discovery Institute and is now at Tokyo Christian University? I have also spoken with Japanese who know about IDT, so please save us the 1/127 million ignorance plea.

    The amount of work that you put into your excruciatingly long posts for your UD personal mission could quite obviously be much better directed elsewhere. Goodbye Washington discovery Vincent! What a sad ‘home author privileges’ to claim at UD when you could aim at a stage higher in credibility and conversation. Yet was it not just a few months back that you were asking UD regulars to help you find a possibly credible venue for your quickly amassing IDist UD publications? 🙁

    “you kept implying that I was a heretic – an accusation I find offensive.” – vjtorley

    Oh goodness, will it be self-martyrdom over here too? That would be offensive; except I’ve never called you a heretic, Vincent. For you to actually acknowledge reasonable Christian philosophy of science that rejects IDism it might make you convince yourself that you’re hanging with the wrong crowd. Every Catholic Christian I know, Vincent, ‘evangelical’ or not, ALREADY accepts the universe is ‘designed’ and ‘created’ by God. They just don’t stand up with the “Illustra Media” anthems to do the ‘science demarcation dance’ Discovery Institute style! You’re a kind of awkward dancer for them, Vincent, but hey, you’re still dancing to their music.

    Here’s the rub: we (vast majority of people, non-IDists, yes, even the theists among us) see through IDism. Why not give it up? The ‘ghost-that-isn’t’ in that Seattle emerald city political-educational machine has been revealed; Dembski – retired, Luskin – moving on to studies, etc. Time for you to join a new trend, Vincent?

    Even leaving aside atheists, many respectable people gave ‘intelligent design theory’ an honest look in the early years. The lack of conceptual and practical progress combined with the repeated political blunders have caused too much reputational damage to the DI. No one credible gets involved with them anymore.

    Thus, indeed we do reject, and certainly do not promote on any of their various comboxes like UD, IDist ideology. I guess my request in response, Vincent, is simply to ask you to acknowledge that a reasonable Christian philosophy of science that accepts God designed and created the universe and us, but rejects IDism (Discovery Institute IDT) is even possible *in theory*. That would be a reconciliatory start. And then you could start looking into what you’ve so far had your eyes closed to and get back on pace.

    There are rather a number of things that you and I agree on Vincent. It seems time that you shed that cloak you once wished to wear called ‘Discovery Institute ID (all alone yet still courageous self-scribed revolutionary!) in Japan.’ Write your farewell to Dallas and John G. West, Vincent. Be explicit. If you need to, use words expressing self-inspection of your (over-)exposure to and entanglement with Discovery Institute IDist ideology. There’s a much more mature and indeed wise position after cleansing yourself of that to move on to.

    Well, but then militarily the Aussis so often do simply follow their USAmerican ‘leaders’ into destructive arrogant wars anyway. : (

    Surely they have books with good philosophy in Japan too. And the internet. Maybe try Charles Taylor? Forget Philip Johnson’s trick or treating, scientific snickering neo-creationists from Pajaro Dunes. Mature with the ‘new trends’ going on around you globally, even in Christendom, instead of being stuck with your own IDist-mimic snacks at Starbucks. Just advice; no heresy insinuation implied. 😉

  31. Gregory,

    You write:

    The amount of work that you put into your excruciatingly long posts for your UD personal mission could quite obviously be much better directed elsewhere.

    1. OK. Where? Please be specific.
    2. I don’t write for UD anymore. You seem to be behind the times.

    It seems time that you shed that cloak you once wished to wear called ‘Discovery Institute ID (all alone yet still courageous self-described revolutionary!) in Japan.’ Write your farewell to Dallas and John G. West, Vincent. Be explicit.

    I have already notified several ID spokespeople by email that I won’t be coming back. And wasn’t my review of Axe’s book explicit enough for you? My review was booted off UD, in case you hadn’t heard. Personally, I happen to find the evidence for design in Nature quite strong, on a prima facie level. I just don’t happen to think the mathematical arguments for ID are very good, at the present time.

    I told you this and provided names perhaps 3 years ago. Will you say it after learning again that Dr. Joseph Poulshock was an affiliated Fellow with the Discovery Institute and is now at Tokyo Christian University? I have also spoken with Japanese who know about IDT, so please save us the 1/127 million ignorance plea.

    I’m afraid I can’t find your list of names, and I can’t find Dr. Poulshock’s name on the current list of Discovery Institute fellows at http://www.discovery.org/about/fellows , or on the archived list for 2014 at https://web.archive.org/web/20140908033545/http://www.discovery.org/id/about/fellows/ . No-one from DI ever mentioned him to me previously. I might add that I seldom go into Tokyo; I simply don’t have time, as I work seven days a week and live 65 kilometers away. If you’ve spoken to some Japanese people who know about ID, then all I can say is: lucky you.

    If you need to, use words expressing self-inspection of your (over-)exposure to and entanglement with Discovery Institute IDist ideology. There’s a much more mature and indeed wise position after cleansing yourself of that to move on to.

    Oh, I see. I’m supposed to do penitence and heap ashes on my head, for ever having been associated with the ID movement? I’m rolling on the floor laughing. That’s what’s so funny about people on the left: they’ve redefined “sin” (as political incorrectness), while still retaining the belief that you need to atone for your past sins by self-denunciation and expressions of remorse. Sounds like a Stalinist (or Maoist) re-education camp. Very 1950s. Ha!

    I guess my request in response, Vincent, is simply to ask you to acknowledge that a reasonable Christian philosophy of science that accepts God designed and created the universe and us, but rejects IDism (Discovery Institute IDT) is even possible *in theory*. That would be a reconciliatory start.

    Gregory, who are you to tell me what to think? And what the heck is “IDism”? And why do you think it’s impossible? You sound very sure of yourself, for someone who is neither a scientist, a philosopher nor a theologian.

    By the way, I never go to Starbucks. Too expensive, and anyway, I don’t like their coffee very much (tried it once; Melbourne’s cafe culture is much better).

  32. vjtorley: Oh, I see. I’m supposed to do penitence and heap ashes on my head, for ever having been associated with the ID movement? I’m rolling on the floor laughing. That’s what’s so funny about people on the left: they’ve redefined “sin” (as political incorrectness), while still retaining the belief that you need to atone for your past sins by self-denunciation and expressions of remorse. Sounds like a Stalinist (or Maoist) re-education camp. Very 1950s. Ha!

    I can’t agree with your apparent view that Gregory counts as being “on the left”. I’ll admit that I’m not at all sure where he fits.

  33. Hi Glen Davidson,

    You write:

    The point of evolution is that it is the millstone of the gods, while it grinds slowly, it grinds exceedingly finely. Assuming that there is a smooth evolutionary slope (very common, it appears), it will take the kludges with which it begins (a carpal bone in a panda’s wrist, say) and hone them to very elegant organs (how the panda’s thumb works today for dealing with bamboo)…

    GAs are especially about honing the kludgy and second-rate into finely-wrought elegant structures, originally using evolutionary processes as their inspiration.

    Your example doesn’t help your case. The panda’s thumb doesn’t contain multiple layers of functionality, like photosystem I or the visual system. It’s simply a sesamoid bone whose existing functionality has been refined by evolution. Big deal. There are no new layers here. You seem unable to distinguish between mere fiddling (which is what GAs are good at) and building new layers of functionality on top of old ones.

    You also write:

    …you’re not trying like Paley did to find actual evidence of design, you’re just of the opinion that evolution can’t do some things that your IDist preconceptions (that life is like machines, hence brittle to change like they are) tell you they can’t, and voila, you conclude design.

    Paley’s evidence for design was the existence of contrivances in Nature. He argued that in our experience, contrivances are invariably the product of an intelligent agent; hence it is rational to infer that the contrivances in the human body were produced by an intelligent designer. My case is built on a subset of the evidence cited by Paley. Whereas he thought that Nature was unable to produce contrivances, I concede that it can build new ones from pre-existing ones. What I argue instead is that we have no evidence of Nature building multi-layered contrivances, particularly ones exhibiting a level of elegance that far exceeds what human designers could accomplish. Other than that, my argument is essentially similar to Paley’s. All it needs to refute it is a counter-instance, which you don’t have.

  34. vjtorley:
    Hi Glen Davidson,

    Your example doesn’t help your case. The panda’s thumb doesn’t contain multiple layers of functionality, like photosystem I or the visual system. It’s simply a sesamoid bone whose existing functionality has been refined by evolution. Big deal. There are no new layers here. You seem unable to distinguish between mere fiddling (which is what GAs are good at) and building new layers of functionality on top of old ones.

    Get real, I was discussing the “kludge” aspect, not your unsupported claim that layering in life is so difficult. You seem unable to keep track of what another person writes.

    I dealt with your unsupported claims regarding layers a good deal, and you just chose to take this out of context and to make an unsupported accusation.

    Paley’s evidence for design was the existence of contrivancesin Nature. He argued that in our experience, contrivances are invariably the product of an intelligent agent; hence it is rational to infer that the contrivances in the human body were produced by an intelligent designer. My case is built on a subset of the evidence cited by Paley.

    Really. How are you arguing that you have found what an architect or artificer would make? By your unfounded assumption that life is designed, thus is as “brittle” to “layering” as designed objects are? That is not how Paley argued. Although he was rather poor at truly demonstrating causal similarities between the contrivances of designed objects and “contrivances” found in life, he was in fact claiming that they do exist.

    You’re talking about very different sorts of systems and claiming that we should understand “layering” to be quite difficult in biologic systems, much as it is in designed systems. Plus, you’re not even showing that the “layering” truly is like what happens in designed systems. That you are treating the evidence as poorly as Paley did is the only close similarity that I can see in your approach.

    Whereas he thought that Nature was unable to produce contrivances, I concede that it can build new ones from pre-existing ones. What I argue instead is that we have no evidence of Nature building multi-layered contrivances, particularly ones exhibiting a level of elegance that far exceeds what human designers could accomplish.

    OK, if we agree with your claim that we have no evidence of nature building “multi-layered contrivances,” what do we have evidence of building such multi-layered “contrivances” (you need to use words properly, rather than expeditiously for your beliefs) in nature? Oh, that’s right, nothing, not humans, not gods, not anything else. All we have are the systems that exhibit massive amounts of evidence of derivation of the sort that would be expected from evolutionary processes.

    That should tell us something. Like that we actually have evidence of “nature” building such systems, and no evidence of anything else doing so. Of course this doesn’t rule out intelligence, but it certainly doesn’t give us any reason to suppose that intelligence had anything to do with their beginnings.

    Other than that, my argument is essentially similar to Paley’s.

    Other than that you have nothing that points toward an actual known intelligence behind such systems (Paley didn’t either, but I suspect that he genuinely didn’t know better), it’s really all just the same. That is, it’s very different.

    All it needs to refute it is a counter-instance, which you don’t have.

    Sorry, it’s not my responsibility to disprove your evidence-free* assertions.

    Glen Davidson

    *Lacking in a sufficient cause-and-effect evidential basis, that is, as “evidence-free” is commonly understood. Not, of course, that there is absolutely nothing that can conceivably be considered evidence for it under certain conditions or premises.

  35. “1. OK. Where? Please be specific.” – vjtorley

    I’ve told you before; you fit perfectly at BioLogos. But they reject your IDism disguised as philosophy (of biology, information, etc.). I would volunteer other specifics & people to you privately. As Aussie in Japan, you are WAY isolated and in some ways kinda oblivious over there in your quasi-IDist, but otherwise fairly normal thinking, Vincent, in case you didn’t know – now it’s been said.

    “2. I don’t write for UD anymore. You seem to be behind the times.” – vjtorley

    Yeah, I stopped paying much attention to UD too, except the occasional news tidbit. Not much time for comboxes these days. Good news for you & a gap perhaps for your writing style to learn academic adjustment.

    “I have already notified several ID spokespeople by email that I won’t be coming back.” – vjtorley

    Very good news also, Vincent!

    “And wasn’t my review of Axe’s book explicit enough for you?” – vjtorley

    Not really even close to ‘enough’. But we can talk about that. It was needed & welcome.

    “I’m supposed to do penitence and heap ashes on my head, for ever having been associated with the ID movement? I’m rolling on the floor laughing” – vjtorley

    We now know what you’re not planning on doing is the ashes thing. 😉 Fine. But what are you actually doing to ‘cleanse’ yourself of this stain in your LANGUAGE? Anything? Just as you capitalise ‘Nature’ unconventionally (or at least, not professionally explained academically) Vincent, please don’t think those of us who moved beyond IDism before you haven’t already scouted the territory well ahead.

    Welcome to post-IDism, if you can find your feet even and steady while on the rock, Vincent, of your version of Christian or Abrahamic monotheistic religion. Untwine those shackles & IDist bonds that once held you plainly yoked, even while you are still apparently not yet seeing the land ahead at this point. Come out of that IDist closet, finally, hurrah! … but I’d suggest don’t do it here at ‘TSZ.’ 😉

    “Starbucks. Too expensive, and anyway…” – vjtorley

    That’s just what the Discovery Institute is in ‘science & faith’ clothing, Vincent. They are the Starbucks of “Science & Faith” with BioLogos their necessary cultural oppositional equivalent. They are ‘too expensive’ for you & for many. Both are indeed social enterprises rather than business enterprises, to their ideological credit, but neither is an especially successful or profound ‘think tank.’ YECism is simply provincial foolishness in evangelical Protestant USAmerican garb.

    “someone who is neither a scientist, a philosopher nor a theologian” – vjtorley

    Who would that be referring to, teacher-Vincent-san? 😉 Lol, check the record, if you can find it on your vinyl player there in Japan.

    You can PM me; something has come up & you are welcome to join in. The land looks better (although Seattle’s land-oceanscape is unarguably beautiful!) as you get accustomed to post-IDism, which will happen in your own unique Australian-Japanese way, eventually. TSZ (which based on their own words, should be called “The Atheist Miserable Skeptical Zone – TAMSZ) isn’t imo any better ‘home-base’ than UD, with its philosophistic quasi-intellectual secularistic anti-ID movement trash. But that’s obviously up to your own interpretive evaluation, not a view that can be forced on you from outside by someone else.

  36. Gregory (in reply to VJTorley) said: The land looks better (although Seattle’s land-oceanscape is unarguably beautiful!) as you get accustomed to post-IDism, which will happen in your own unique Australian-Japanese way, eventually.

    In addition to the well-known Discovery Institute, Seattle is also the home to my university, which has numerous excellent evolutionary biologists and population geneticists. I am sure that they all enjoy that same scenery, whatever their exact views on religion. And I am aware of none that are sympathetic to ID.

    Living in Seattle does not identify one as part of the ID community.

  37. “Living in Seattle does not identify one as part of the ID community.” – Joe

    Thanks for that profound insight, Joe. Surely said on biological talent alone. 😉 Living in Seattle doesn’t mean one likes Pearl Jam either, but so what?

    Washington is one of the least religious states in the USA, just like B.C. is one of the least religious provinces in Canada. Welcome to sociology, Joe! Surely it’s o.k. if one surpasses evolutionary theories and evolutionist ideology in social sciences and humanities then Joe? Or do you promote sociobiology & eVo psych too?

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