Like kairosfocus, I thought this was an excellent defence of ID, and deserves a response from those of us who can no longer post at UD (a little additional formatting applied by me):
It’s central to the ideological glue that holds together “the ID movement” that the following are all conflated:Darwin’s theories; neo-Darwinism; modern evolutionary theory; Epicurean materialistic metaphysics; Enlightenment-inspired secularism. (Maybe I’m missing one or two pieces of the puzzle.) In my judgment, a mind incapable of making the requisite distinctions hardly deserves to be taken seriously.
I think your analysis of the driving force behind ID is way off base. That’s not to say that persons who advocate ID (including myself) aren’t sometimes guilty of sloppy use of language, nor am I making the claim that the modern synthetic theory of evolution is synonymous with materialism or secularism. Having made that acknowledgement, though, it is demonstrably true that
It turns out you can’t mention “poker” in a comment. So would someone like to suggest a substitute? It can be such a useful analogy/example, when discussing probabilities!
has an interview on youtube (well, I assume it’s an interview – only his responses are shown). Here’s a transcript, with some commentary by me, and no doubt other comments will be forthcoming 🙂
In Darwins’ day we knew very little about cellular chemistry, for one thing, we knew very little about metabolism, about how cells go about making the chemicals that they need to make the big, the big parts of living cells. We now understand that in some detail, we also understand about the proteins that do the chemistry of life. These are called enzymes. We understand how large these enzymes are. We understand that they are encoded by genes, and we understand how that encoding takes place, that’s called the genetic code. So, really, you put all that together, we now understand something about digitally encoded information, in cells, encoded in the genome, we understand why it’s there, to code proteins, and how the proteins function to do the chemistry of life. And we also have the ability to measure, to some degree, how much information is there.
All true, and clearly stated. No issue from me there.
If you put all that together, we know see something that looks very much like human designs where we use digitally encoded information to accomplish things
Well, maybe. A little. One huge difference is that biological “designs” are self-reproducing organisms, and so far human designs are resolutely non-self-reproducing. In fact, the obvious answer to the alien who finds a watch on a heath, and wonders if it was designed or not, is: “well, does it reproduce?” If yes, it is probably biological. If no, it’s probably designed by a person. But I’ll grant Axe his digitality – yes, nucleotides are discrete, and yes, their sequence is determines results in the cell products that go to make cells into reproducing organisms (and reproducing cells within organisms, of course.)
But after this excellent, clearly well informed and well-articulated start, he then adds a comment of mind-boggling ignorance:
and we know that it’s impossible to get information on that scale through a chance process that Darwinism employed.
It’s what many scientists are accused of by those who condemn science as “evolutionary materialism” and “evolutionary materialism” with “atheism”.
But what is “reductionism” supposed to mean? Evolution News and Views has an article up today (h/t to bornagain77 at UD) that is a critique of an article on “neuroaesthetics” in PLOS biology.
The EnV article begins:
Evolutionary materialists must believe, at some level, that the experience of beauty can be reduced to actions of neurons in the brain
(my emphasis)
Well, I guess I’m an “evolutionary materialist”, and I’m also a neuroscientist. But I was also trained in the arts, and spent most of my life as a musician. Do I think that “the experience of beauty can be reduced to actions of neurons in the brain”?
Benford’s law, also called the first-digit law, refers to the frequency distribution of digits in many (but not all) real-life sources of data. In this distribution, the number 1 occurs as the first digit about 30% of the time, while larger numbers occur in that position less frequently: 9 as the first digit less than 5% of the time. This distribution of first digits is the same as the widths of gridlines on a logarithmic scale. Benford’s law also concerns the expected distribution for digits beyond the first, which approach a uniform distribution.
TSZ team: Can we build this into a statistically testable (Null hypothesis?) ID Hypothesis?
This one piqued my interest:
“Frequency of first significant digit of physical constants plotted against Benford’s law” – Wikipedia
A very nice post by Barry at UD struck me as worth reposting here (as I can’t post there), inspired by Neil Rickert:
Phinehas asks Neil Rickert a fascinating question about the supposed direction of evolution. Neil says he will address it in a separate thread, and I started this one for that purpose. The rest of the post is Phenehas’ question to Neil:
@Neil I also appreciate the professional tone. I am a skeptic regarding what evolution can actually accomplish. In keeping with your demonstrated patience, I’d be grateful if you would give serious consideration to something that keeps tripping me up. I’ve often thought of natural selection as the heuristic to random mutations’ exhaustive search.
A path-finding algorithm can be aided in finding a path from point A to point B by using distance to B as a heuristic to narrow the search space. Without a heuristic, you are left to blind chance. It is said that evolution has no purpose or goal, so there is no point B. It is also claimed that evolution isn’t simply the result of blind chance, so a heuristic would seem to be required. Somehow, natural selection is supposed to address both of these concerns. Nature selects for fitness, we are told, so somehow we have a heuristic even without a point B.
But what is fitness? How does it work as a heuristic? How is it defined? Evidently, it is all about reproductive success. But how does one measure reproductive success? This is where things get fuzzy for me. Surely evolution is a story about the rise of more and more complex organisms. Isn’t this how the tree of life is laid out? Surely it is the complexity of highly developed organisms that evolution seeks to explain. Surely Mt. Improbable has man near its peak and bacteria near its base. But by what metric is man more successful at reproducing than bacteria? If I am a sponge somewhere between the two extremes, how is a step toward bacteria any less of a point B for me than a step toward man? Why should the fitness heuristic prefer a step upward in complexity toward man in any way whatsoever over a step downward in complexity toward bacteria?
It seems that, under the more obvious metrics for calculating reproductive success, bacteria are hard to beat. Even more, a rise in complexity, if anything, would appear to lead to less reproductive success and not more. So how can natural selection be any sort of heuristic for helping us climb Mt Improbable’s complexity when every simpler organism at the base of the mountain is at least as fit in passing on its genes as the more complex organisms near it’s peak? And without this heuristic, how are we not back to a blind, exhaustive search?
Barry Arrington pays us the somewhat dubious compliment of posting an article on the subject of The Skeptical Zone. I’d like to respond to it here (as I cannot respond to it there, although in contrast, Barry is welcome to come here if he would like to make a counter-point).
For those of you who do not know, some months ago Elizabeth Liddle started the website known as The Skeptical Zone (TSZ). The site has a sort of symbiotic relationship with UD, because many, if not most, of the posts there key off our posts here.
Not only does TSZ have a name that invokes a skeptical turn of mind, it also has a motto apparently intended to bolster that attitude: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.” The motto is taken from Oliver Cromwell’s August 5, 1650 letter to the synod of the Church of Scotland urging them to break their alliance with royalist forces.
Now with a name and a motto like that, one might think the site is home to iconoclastic non-conformists bent on disrupting the status quo.
Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Being “skeptical” doesn’t necessarily mean “disrupting the status quo”. It means, well, being skeptical – being prepared to doubt claims, to demand supporting evidence, to accept conclusions provisionally, and, above all, being prepared to hold one’s own assumptions up to scrutiny. But be that as it may…
consist basically in two main equations: the Hardy-Weinberg law and the Price equation.
Furthermore niwrad says that
The Hardy-Weinberg law mathematically describes how a population is in equilibrium both for the frequency of alleles and for the frequency of genotypes. Indeed because this law is a fundamental principle of genetic equilibrium, it doesn’t support Darwinism, which means exactly the contrary, the breaking of equilibrium toward the increase of organization and the creation of entirely new organisms.
I just finished teaching my course in theoretical population genetics (with lots of equations, but actually not the Price Equation, as it happens). And I can say that the statement about the Hardy-Weinberg law shows niwrad to be mixed up about the import of Hardy-Weinberg proportions. Let me explain … Continue reading →
Well said. You have put your finger on the key issue.
And the evidence clearly shows that there are not self-organizing processes in nature that can account for life.
This is particularly evident when we look at an information-rich medium like DNA. As to self-organization of something like DNA, it is critical to keep in mind that the ability of a medium to store information is inversely proportional to the self-ordering tendency of the medium. By definition, therefore, you simply cannot have a self-ordering molecule like DNA that also stores large amounts of information.
The only game left, as you say, is design.
Unless, of course, we want to appeal to blind chance . . .
Can anyone make sense of this? EA describes DNA as “an information rich molecule”. Then as a “self-ordering molecule”. Is he saying that DNA is self-ordering therefore can’t store information? Or that it does store information,therefore can’t be self-ordering? Or that because it is both it must be designed? And in any case, is the premise even true? And what “definition” is he talking about? Who says that “the ability of a medium to store information is inversely proportional to the self-ordering tendency fo the medium?” By what definition of “information” and “self-ordering” might this be true? And is it supposed to be an empirical observation or a mathematical proof?
The earlier thread is based on the accusation that Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins “believe the fundamental questions in biology have been settled and all that is left is to suss out the details.”
Well, a welcome of sorts. Unfortunately, the hackers emptied the user file, and so we are down to three users right now (which is a considerable improvement from zero, as I can at least now access the admin panel!)
The bad news of course is that that means that you may get a bunch of spam from the hackers 🙁
I am slowly registering more people, as I can get details from your posts, but I don’t think there will be any problem in you just re-registering. I’m still wall-to-wall with stuff, but should have some time on Sunday to find out whether there is any other damage, and try to fix it. Also, maybe, post 🙂
Canadian YEC Robert will be familiar to many from various evolution/anti-evolution blogs. He showed up in my ‘macro/microevolution’ thread, and I am creating this as a thread for Robert to air his views and for those who choose to engage with him to do so. I am moving certain posts here from macro/micro, as they are off-topic for that thread.
Bob is drunk and driving too fast on rain-slicked streets. He runs a red light and doesn’t even see Belinda, a pedestrian who is crossing the street. He hits her and she dies.
Scenario 2
Bob is drunk and driving too fast on rain-slicked streets. He runs a red light. Belinda, a pedestrian, is about to cross the street. Luckily she spots Bob’s speeding car in time and remains on the curb. She lives. Bob doesn’t even see her.
Bob’s behavior is identical in the two scenarios, and the difference in outcome is due to something completely outside of Bob’s control: whether Belinda spots his car in time.
Questions for discussion
1. In moral terms, is Bob equally blameworthy in both scenarios, or does his culpability depend on the outcome?
2. The legal system will punish Bob far more harshly in the first scenario than in the second. Is this appropriate?
A number of posts have appeared at Uncommon Descent on the topic of macroevolution. Comments here have been appended to other threads, but I thought it an appropriate subject for its own thread.
The posts start here with a link to chemist James M Tour’s blog, on which he posted some personal musings on the creation-evolution debate. Numerous follow-on posts have appeared on UD subsequently, in a rather recursive comments-becoming-posts-spawning-more-comments-that-become-posts manner. I won’t detail them all, but they comprise the bulk of UD threads between 18th and 22nd February.
Tour admits his lack of credentials in the subject, but fundamentally expresses doubts that microevolution (which he accepts) leads to macroevolution. The issue has taken a bizarre turn since, apparently, a couple of UD regulars have offered to stump up costs for Nick Matzke to have lunch with Tour in a meeting that will be witnessed by one of them (it’s his dollar!) but, at Tour’s request, will not be recorded or discussed externally. A personal tutorial. Matzke’s mission, should he choose to accept it, is to prove to Tour’s satisfaction that the extrapolation is justified – that macroevolution is sufficiently explained by iterating the small degrees of microevolution.
At Uncommon Descent, “niwrad” has posted a link to a Sequences Probability Calculator. This webserver allows you to set a number of trials (“chemical reactions”) per second, the number of letters per position (20 for amino acids) and a sequence length, and then it calculates how long it will take for you to get exactly that sequence. Each trial assumes that you draw a sequence at random, and success is only when you exactly match the target sequence. This of course takes nearly forever.
So in effect the process is one of random mutation without natural selection present, or random mutation with natural selection that shows no increase in fitness when a sequence partially matches the target. This leads to many thoughts about evolution, such as:
Do different species show different sequences for a given protein? Typically they do, so the above scheme implies that they can’t have evolved from common ancestors that had a different protein sequence. They each must have been the result of a separate special creation event.
If an experimenter takes a gene from one species and puts it into another, so that the protein sequence is now that of the source species, does it still function? If not, why are people so concerned about making transgenic organisms (they’d all be dead anyway)?
If we make a protein sequence by combining part of a sequence from one species and the rest of that protein sequence from another, will that show function in either of the parent species? (Typically yes, it will).
Does a consideration of the experimental evidence show that the SPC fails to take account of the function of nearby sequences?
The author of the Sequences Probability Calculator views evolution as basically impossible. The SPC assumes that any change in a protein makes it unable to function. Each species sits on a high fitness peak with no shoulders. In fact, experimental studies of protein function are usually frustrating, because it is hard to find noticeable difference of function, at least ones big enough to measure in the laboratory.
As Neil Rickert was foolish enough to grant me posting rights, I had better take advantage of the offer before the sysops sensibly change their minds.
Consider an argument used consistently by the ID community: that the natural processes of genetic mutation and environmental selection acting upon the resultant variation are incapable of generating speciation.
Their recurring metaphor is of improbable islands of fitness separated by unbridgeable seas of non-functionality. Even if the hill-climbing capability of “random mutation plus natural selection” is real (and even incorporating unselected allele frequency changes), evolution can’t work because “you can’t get there from here”. For brevity, let me acronymise this argument as CANTSWIM.
CANTSWIM has a great many shortcomings as a metaphor for how evolutionary processes actually work, and you don’t need me to enumerate them. But let me hand over the title deeds to the evolutionary farm, and assume that CANTSWIM is factual.
At the same time, the ID community has adopted the claim made by the leadership of the ENCODE program that >80 per cent of the human genome is functional. The devil, of course, is in the detail of how “functional” is defined.
Why do evil and suffering exist if the world is presided over by a God who is all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly loving? That is the “problem of evil” in a nutshell. In an earlier post (and in the comments) I explained and argued against two common theistic responses to the problem of evil. Now I’ll tackle a third response from Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart.
I don’t think this is an appropriate subject for this blog (although Barry Arrington and KF found it quite suitable for UD). However, it interests me and I have written a small piece on my own blog. So I thought I would take the opportunity to advertise it here.
[Comments closed for this topic. Please comment at Mark’s blog (link above). – Neil Rickert]
Michael Todd has joined our discussion, and makes the assumption in the title of this thread. Michael introduced himself with “Greetings all. I’m new here. I’m also a Christian.”
Here’s the rest of what Michael said in that comment:
I assume most here are atheistic materialists. Fine. However, the dilemma is yours. Why? Glad you asked. Materialistic determinism. Everything that happens, according to the necessary tenets of your creed, is a result of the properties inherent in matter. This would include all of your mental life – personality, memory, and perceptions. This would mean that all of your assertions are nothing more than expressions of an unrelenting matter/energy cascade.
The discussion started by Michael will be moved to this new thread.
