I have committed the unpardonable sin of promoting ID as theology and arguing ID is not science. ID is the lineal descendant of Paley’s natural theology (as in contrast to “revealed theology”). I’ve publicly disputed the use of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics as a general argument in favor of ID/Creation, and I’ve been mildly critical of the concept of specified complexity and its successors. I’ve suggested ID is most appropriately taught in college/seminary theology and philosophy departments. When I published a 2005 exchange between myself and Eugenie Scott of the NCSE regarding the appropriateness of ID being taught in college religion and philosophy departments, Eugenie was much kinder to me than some in the ID community who insist “ID is science.” See: Correspondence between Salvador Cordova and Dr. Eugenie Scott
To that end, in conjunction with university professors, deans of Christian and secular colleges (who are favorable to both Intelligent Design and belief in Special Creation), I’m helping build out the electronic component of courses that teach ID and concepts of Creationism for such venues.
The first order of business in such a course is studying Paley’s watch argument and modern incarnations of Paley’s watch. But I’ve found compartmentalizing the pure science and math from the theological issues is helpful. Thus, at least for my own understanding and peace of mind, I’ve considered writing a paper to help define terms that will avoid the use of theologically loaded phrases like “materialism”, “naturalism”, “theism”, and even “Intelligent Design”, etc. I want to use terms that are as theologically neutral as possible to form the mathematical and physical foundation of the ID argument. The purpose of this is to circumvent circular arguments as best as possible. If found what I believe are some unfortunate equivocations and circularity in Bill Dembki’s definition of Design using the explanatory filter, and I’m trying to avoid that.
VJ Torley was very kind to help me phrase the opening of my paper, and I have such high respect for him that I’ve invited him to be a co-author of the paper he so chooses. He of course is free to write his own take on the matters I specify in the opening of my paper. In any case, I’m deeply indebted to him for being a fellow traveler on the net as well as the example he has set as a meticulous scholar.
Here is a draft opening of the papers which I present here at TSZ to solicit comments in the process of revising and expanding my paper.
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Multiverse or Miracles of God?
Circumventing metaphysical baggage when describing massive statistical or physical violations of normative expectations
Intro/Abstract
When attempting to set up a framework for expressing the improbability of phenomena that may turn out to have metaphysical implications, it may be helpful to isolate the metaphysical aspects of these phenomena from the actual math used to describe them. Additionally, the probabilities (which are really statements of uncertainty) can be either observer- or perspective-dependent. For example, in a raffle or a professional sporting league, there is a guaranteed winner. Using more formal terminology, we can say that it is normative that there is a winner, from the perspective of the entire system or ensemble of possibilities; however, from the perspective of any given participant (e.g. an individual raffle ticket holder), it is by no means normative for that individual to be a winner.
With respect to the question of the origin of life and the fine-tuning of the universe, one can postulate a scenario where it is normative for life to emerge in at least one universe, when we are considering the ensemble of all universes (i.e. the multiverse). However, from the perspective of the universe in which an observer happens to be situated, the fine-tuning of that particular universe and the origin of life in that universe are not at all normative: one can reasonably ask, “Why did this universe turn out to be so friendly to life, when it could have been otherwise?” Thus, when someone asserts that it is extremely improbable that a cell should arise from inanimate matter, this statement can be regarded as normative from the perspective of human experience and experimental observations, even though it is not necessarily normative in the ultimate sense of the word. Putting it more informally, one might say that abiogenesis and fine-tuning are miraculous from the human point of view, but whether they are miraculous in the theological or ultimate sense is a question that may well be practically (if not formally) undecidable.
The objective of this article is to circumvent, or at least minimize, the metaphysical baggage of phrases like “natural”, “material”, “supernatural”, “intelligent,” when formulating probabilistic descriptions of phenomena such as the fine-tuning of the universe and the origin of life. One can maintain that these remarkable phenomena are not explicable in terms of any accepted normative mechanisms which are known to us from everyday experience and scientific observation, and remain well within the realm of empirical science. However, whether fine-tuning and the origin of life are normative in the ultimate sense, and whether they are best explained by God or the multiverse, are entirely separate issues, which fall outside the domain of empirical science.
What inspired this essay was an article by evolutionary biologist and NAS member Eugene Koonin:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892545/
an invited reviewer astutely commented:
To which I say, “that exactly the right idea.” 🙂
Another gap for IDers to temporarily stick their God into.
ETA: Under the code phrase “non-normative”.
Who says it’s ‘unpardonable’? Who says it’s a ‘sin’? A bit of individual evangelical artistic license, not fully believable.
Are you trained in either theology or philosophy? It sounded like your education was/is largely directed elsewhere.
Unwise. Set up a conversation where theology/worldview is welcome & then there is no need to be ‘neutral’ (which is never really neutral anyway).
It does not surprise me that:
1) Sal commends skeptic-fixated VJ Torley as a role model in this discourse, and surely Vincent will reciprocate & be honoured to co-author his first published paper since his philosophy dissertation together with Sal, who promotes IDism & YECism,
2) Sal chooses a black & white, either/or approach in his paper from the title onward.
I wrote a few years ago:
One theoretical physicist says:
And since I related the lottery example to multiverses, it’s worthy pointing out, the lottery is intelligently designed, so by way of extension, multiverses aren’t necessarily an overturning of the design argument! In fact Stephen Meyer points out for multiverse to work, and I presume much like the lottery, it has to be causally connected — as in DESIGNED!
I haven’t added this in the paper yet as I’m hoping VJ Torley will weigh in on this comment.
stcordova,
How can talk of multi universes be science and ID not be? That’s not logical. Ultimately science is about discovering to the best of our limited senses. You are not going to see a multiverse anymore than you will see the designer.
The phrase “normative expectation” is used in some social sciences, google doesn’t show it used in physical science or mathematics. That’s probably a good thing, in as much as if I used something formally defined, it is tied down to a highly specific situation. I want it as a qualitative and intuitive notion. “The sun will rise” is a normative expectation.
speaking of which Bertrand Russel said:
http://www.personal.kent.edu/~rmuhamma/Philosophy/RBwritings/ProbPhiloBook/chap-VI.htm
http://www.personal.kent.edu/~rmuhamma/Philosophy/RBwritings/ProbPhiloBook/chap-VI.htm
We don’t expect the operation of normative chemical principles to take an arbitrary soup of chemicals and generate anything resembling cellular life. This is in accordance with a principle stated in so many words from texbook biochemistry (such as McKee and Mckee):
Which comes from Rudolf Virchow, and is a more specific way of stating the law of biogenesis by Pasteur. Thus, abiogenesis is, to the best of our understanding, a violation of normative expectation. The only question is how massive the violation is.
James Tour and Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Richard Smalley, conclude the violation is substantial based on chemical theory, and observations agree with theory.
If a multiverse leads to observable phenomena, it’s scientifically testable.
There are cosmologists, such as Roger Penrose, who have come up with multiverse models that they say (I don’t have the qualifications to assess the claim) leads to phenomena that should be observable within our universe, such as particular patterns in the cosmic microwave background radiation.
Whether those patterns are really there, and whether they’re actually caused by a multiverse or some other mechanism is for cosmologists to determine. But it is strictly speaking not true to say that a multiverse model is by definition untestable.
I would actually agree that if somebody posits a multiverse that makes no testable predictions, then any belief in the truth of the model is pretty much faith. I say this as an atheist who has no belief in any multiverse model. I don’t think they’re needed to answer fine-tuning arguments at all.
That’s right, we don’t. Which is why nobody working in the field actually posits that is what happened.
That depends on the contents of the talk. Does ID lead to testable predictions? Does the multiverse? If they do, they’re both science, if neither does, they’re not science.
Perhaps that is true. Perhaps we will never directly observe the multiverse, or some designer, but merely the effect they had on our universe. In order to determine that we’re going to need a model that makes predictions about observable phenomena.
In the same way it is possible to detect the existence of a planet without directly observing it, because of the effect of it’s gravitational attraction on surrounding matter in the universe. It may be that the planet is obscured by dust clouds so we can’t directly see it, but we can see the glow of dust orbiting around it for example. Or it might be too small and far away to be picked up by telescopes, but we can see the effect of it’s gravitational pull on the start it orbits.
Fine-tuning of the physical constants are posited by many theists to be evidence of this type, as in a sort of indirect evidence for the existence of a designer. So while we can’t see the designer, they say, we can see the effect of the designer on the universe.
All that could be true of the multiverse too. While it can’t be directly observed(we can’t look into another universe and take pictures of it’s contents), it could lead to certain observable phenomena in our universe. There are many candidate multiverse models that are claimed by their authors to lead to observable effects.
Right, you have just listed one such prediction. Fine tuning. I can think of plenty of others. So yea, science. Sorry Sal. And Gregory. And Swamidass. And VJ. Rummy admits it’s science!
If it’s science then go an expand on it. Stand on the shoulders of those who have come before you and do something with it.
Or are semantic games sufficient?
So what is your “prediction” regarding fine tuning? Don’t forget, predictions are things relating to what we don’t already know.
So go on, if you can think of “plenty of other” predictions why not list them?
The thing about this game is that you won’t do that as it means that if any of your predictions are ever shown to be false you’ll be in a difficult position.
There are a couple of real problems with the improbability and finetuning arguments.
One is the silent assumption that different universes are actually possible. We don’t have a clue if this is true or not.
The other problem is Douglas Adam’s puddle effect. It is a 100% given that any observer will always exist in a universe that is fine tuned enough to allow him to live. It simply cannot be otherwise. Therefore, this argument leads to no conclusions at all as to the (im)probability of that universe. It is like a lottery winner who has zero information about the number of participants in the lottery – in which case he can’t say anything at all about how improbable his win actually is.
Finally, there is the other unwritten assumption that something exists outside time and space to create our universe. To me, this notion is incoherent. We can write the words ‘to exist outside time and space’ but I challenge anyone to assign any actual meaning to them. In my view this is a good example of human language creating a lot more problems than it solves (which relates directly to various other discussions ongoing here about the nature of abstractions).
I was describing their argument in order to explain the principle of being able to detect something indirectly, I don’t actually agree that the fine-tuning argument (in it’s current formulations used by apologists) is a proper scientific model because it’s “predictions” are too vague, and a mechanism is completely lacking.
There is no designer “equation” that describes how these values come to exist, or why they take the exact values that they do.
Generally theists will say that a designer of some sort wanted to make a life-permitting universe. But there is a large ensemble of life-permitting ranges of these constants, even though as a total fraction of all values they can conceivably take the life-permitting ones is a very small one.
What we need is a model that yields something like a curve, or some specific values that follow from some mechanism of formation, which we can then compare to measurements.
This argument makes no sense as a response to the fine-tuning argument. The puddle-analogy would explain why life is adapted to fit a particular environment(it’s natural selection that makes life “take the shape” of the “hole” it’s in), but it does not explain why the existence of life is permitted by the laws of physics. Adaptation does not explain the constants of nature.
The real problem with the fine-tuning argument is actually that it attempts to show that the current outcome is unlikely, so instead design must be the preferred option because it is, presumably, much more likely. But nobody ever proceeds to show how likely design is. If you are to pick between two different hypotheses and you want to pick the most likely one, you’re going to need to compare two numbers. But we’re only ever given one number, which is the probability that the constants of nature are due to blind chance. We’re never given the probability that they’re due to design. That’s just assumed to be very high, but nobody ever goes through the job of showing this is the case.
What’s the Bayesian prior of a fine-tuner that wants to pick our exact values and constants? Well among an infinite ensemble of conceivable designers, we need to posit one that wants this exact universe with it’s constants and initial conditions. What’s the probability of that? Well it’s basically infinitely low. So fine-tuning solves nothing. The designer that theistic apologists try to invent to solve the fine-tuning problem has a prior probability that is as low or even lower than the constants they are inventing a designer to solve.
What I think faded_glory was saying was, if “fine-tuning”, however you define it, is necessary for life to exist, then a finely-tuned universe is the only kind of universe we could find ourselves in, regardless of how it got that way.
It does not help you distinguish between a multiverse origin or a designer origin.
So the fine-tuning is not evidence, by itself, of an intelligent designer.
Thanks for your comment.
There is however another angle to this, and what I’m about to say isn’t exactly a counter to your point, maybe totally unrelated, but it reminded me to say something….
A universe that makes cellular replicators (aka life, but use the notion of cellular replicators) possible, also makes it improbable. This is a paradox.
Another way of framing it. A double-headed coin where all the outcomes are heads, makes the outcome of of 500 coins 100% heads un-spectacular. What make 500 coins 100% heads spectacular is if the coins are fair.
Fine tuning allows for a range of possibilities as far as life. Most universes with random parameters would be dead, at best only hydrogen would be in the periodic table. These universes would be making “life” that is like the double-headed coin in as much as that’s all one could work with. The notion of cellular replicators and highly improbable phenomenon such as life wouldn’t even be a possibility. We live not only in a universe that makes cellular replicators possible (because fine tuning makes a periodic table possible, vs. just hydrogen at best), it also simultaneously makes life improbable (from normative expectation).
I predict that if there are other universes, they will have zero impact on our universe, because they are not in our universe.
So let’s just test if there are other universes effecting our universe, and we can see if my prediction is true.
On the other hand, I predict if there is a designer to this universe, there will be laws, or constants, which are ordered and non-chaotic.
I bet there is a designer.
Yes, but OTOH they would be stuffed with slood, which we are lacking.
Fair Witness,
Exactly, thank you for clarifying my point.
Rumraket,
…this argument leads to no conclusions at all as to the (im)probability of that universe. It is like a lottery winner who has zero information about the number of participants in the lottery – in which case he can’t say anything at all about how improbable his win actually is.
Don’t you think that such a designer would himself be ordered and non-chaotic?
Who designed him?
You’re welcome. Too bad phoodoo doesn’t grasp it.
stcordova,
The normative mechanism according to ID theory is a mind according to the ID claims I am familiar with.
Fine tuning is a classic reification mistake. It mistakes our equations for the universe they’re trying to describe.
If I take the formula of a circle, and I change pi, the equation no longer describes the circle. Yet the circles remain intact. If I take the equations that describe the universe and change the constants in them, the equations no longer describe the universe, but the universe remains intact. We’re imagining that our equations have power over the universe and its nature, despite they’re but descriptions of our observations. The equations depend on the universe, not the other way around. So, yes, there’s fine tuning, intelligent fine tuning. But not of the universe. There’s fine tuning of our equations to try and match our observations.
So, stop this fucking nonsense.
Laws and constants are conceptual devices we use to describe our observations phoodoo. Our equations follow our observations, not the other way around.
If what you mean is that the universe would be comprehensible to a point, then you’d have it backwards. Intelligence cannot even exist without a nature that behaves in ways that can be comprehended, at least to a point. Intelligence is processing, processing that behaves non-erratically, and that takes input, hopefully non-erratic input, at least to a point, in order to have something to process. Therefore, a nature that behaves non-erratically, at least to a point, is necessary for intelligence to exist and operate.
But mind cannot be described like principles of physics and chemistry, it is capricious and often not repeatable.
Though I believe in ID, the behavior of a mind is not as predictable as the behavior of normative mechanisms of physics and chemistry.
When I was referring to normative mechanism, I was referring to those that are accepted as reasonably well characterized in terms of predictable outcomes given certain conditions.
In my experience saying “ID is science” does more harm to promoting ID than help because it becomes a read herring when in fact what should be the focus is the failure to explain life in terms of accepted normative mechanism like the ordinary behavior of chemistry and physics. Ordinary chemistry and physics explains a lot of the the reasons life can perpetuate, but it doesn’t explain it’s origins, in fact suggests life is improbable (as in far from normative expectation).
stcordova,
It is right on the edge of science and philosophy. Its biggest problem is that it is limited. A mind is a mechanism and it can be tested as for its ability to arrange parts or sequences.
The people that insist it is not science are generally opposing the ideological/political implications for categorizing ID as science.
What I’m also trying to show is that abiogenesis, some elements of evolutionary theory, multiverses, etc. are actually faith-based beliefs not consistent with normative mechanisms, hence, they aren’t science.
One could make the argument that if multiverses, abiogenesis, and evolutionary theory are accepted as science, then ID and Creation theory should be accepted as science too!
I like the idea of making the whole conversation about what we can predict about the world using our cognitive maps.
My main philosophical worry is that one can replace “normative” with “expected” and “non-normative” as “unexpected” without any loss of content, so I don’t know what rhetorical work “normative” is doing here.
But taking the crucial concept to be that of expectation, that is surely quite plastic. What one expects depends on one’s cognitive map of the relevant domain, and that varies with culture and education.
For example: someone whose cognitive map of nature includes concepts like “far-from-equilibrium systems,” “dissipative structures,” and “autocatalytic networks” (to cite the contributions of Ilya Prigogine and Stuart Kauffmann) would have different priors, and hence different expectations, then someone whose cognitive map of nature did not include those concepts.
I also think that it would be worthwhile, in this context, to revisit Hume’s argument against miracles in Book 10 of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, since Hume’s entire argument is squarely epistemological and not metaphysical, i.e. not “are miracles possible?” but “is it even reasonable to believe in miracles?”
From what principle do you predict this? As in, why is your prediction like that?
From what principle do you predict this? What is your design-model? What do you mean by “ordered” exactly? How do you propose we measure this “order” thing, and what value do you predict it should take?
What do you mean by “non-chaotic”? How do you prpose we measure this “non-chaotic” thing, and what value do you predict it should take?
With whom, and what are you betting, and what are the terms of the bet? How long does the bet stand?
Thank you for your comment, and I’m certainly open to suggestions as this is going into teaching materials.
I like to be succinct as possible, and your suggestion made my posting here at TSZ worthwhile. Thank you.
Normative is the basis of what is expected, but then if I simply say, “expected” it implicitly is based on what we believe is normal, normative, ordinary — although, psychologically someone can expect something that is not normal. I might only then add the term “normative” when I really want to convey the expectation is inferred by past experience of what is normal, like the sun rising every day.
I didn’t read far enough regarding Bertrand Russell’s support for induction, but I suppose, from a practical standpoint, “it works” for most purposes is a good enough reason to accept it as working hypothesis.
stcordova,
I agree with you. 🙂
Who in the ID movement has attacked you? Was it anonymous commenters on UD or was it prominent fellows of the DI?
Arrington and friends. A few in the ID movement, who shall not be named, were a tad disgruntled. There are also a few YEC creationists that didn’t exactly like my description of ID.
See the false accusations pile up here:
That was like 3 years ago. It was totally false. Arrington owes me an apology. Fat chance of that. Especially ironic is his self-righteous assertions of holding the moral high ground.
Instead of saying “accepted normative mechanisms” I could say, “accepted mechanisms of physics and chemistry” with the provision, there could be some modest revision. For example, I think it’s doubtful a lot of basic chemistry, the periodic table, etc. is going to be overturned. Perhaps I’ll use “accepted mechanisms of physics and chemistry” instead of “accepted normative mechanisms”. That should be at least less contentious since, at least with respect to origin of life, the problem is still framed in terms of ordinary chemical principles.
Hi Sal and everyone,
I have to respectfully disagree with Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder on this issue. As Ethan Siegel has pointed out, “If you have an inflationary Universe that’s governed by quantum physics, a Multiverse is unavoidable.” At the present time, the theory of inflation is far from certain: atheist physicist Sean Carroll gives it a 50% chance of being true, a figure he allows is “lower than many cosmologists but higher than some.” But it is certainly a scientific theory. In my book, if something is an automatic prediction of a scientific theory, then it’s science.
Re Dr. Stephen Meyer’s comments on the multiverse: he is right to point out that the multiverse fails to eliminate the fine-tuning problem: it just kicks it up one level. The reason is that inflation itself requires fine-tuning to make it work – a point Dr. Carroll confirmed for me, when I emailed him recently on the subject.
I’d be reluctant, however, to draw comparisons with a lottery, because a lottery (unlike a raffle or a professional sporting league) may sometimes have no winner. Cheers.
Assuming somethings, the probability that the conditions necessary for its existence is one. Even if the parameters, taken as a subset of all possible parameters, is improbable.
In my mystical moments, I tend to assume that this is the interpretation of multiverse in which I exist.
As I understand it, ‘normative” expectations are about what we think should happen based on social standards, whereas “predictive/empirical expectations” are about we predict will happen, eg from science.
You seem to be using the term to mainly mean “predictive explanations”.
https://www.coursera.org/lecture/norms/3-1-R6D57
On multiverses: For me and many philosophers and scientists (but not for all of them by far ), science is more than prediction, explanation, and control. It is also about what the theories (NOT the observations!) of science tell us about reality.
Multiverses come in varying types, but one type is a consequence of a well-respected theory, namely eternal inflation, and eternal inflation is consistent with everything we can observe. Therefore, such multiverses should not be dismissed out of hand. (That’s a normative expectation, AFAIK, but based on a science norm that not all accept).
Which is not to deny that many scientists and philosophers do so dismiss them.
Sabione H is in the middle somewhere, at least in this post, which includes a nice summary of the various types of multiverses.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2015/12/ask-dr-b-is-multiverse-science-is.html
(ETA: VJT links to a later post of hers where she has changed her mind. She is certainly more fun to read when she takes this attitude)
But she is blunt about scientific status of supergravity. Here are her derisive remarks on the just-announced prize for supergravity theory:
“Awarding a scientific prize, especially one accompanied by so much publicity, for an idea that has no evidence speaking for it, sends the message that in the foundations of physics contact to observation is no longer relevant. ”
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/08/special-breakthrough-prize-awarded-for.html
What has to be fine-tuned in eternal inflation theory?
I mentioned Beni in another thread. His book is trying to make the case that scientific representations can be best be modeled using the theory of PP; he leans toward to Clark’s reading of PP (not eg Hohwy’s) which Beni calls “moderate enactivism”. He then goes on to to make a new argument for structural scientific realism using the analogy to how cognitive PP processing latching onto structure in reality.
This is just based on the intro chapter which is all I have read.
It turns out that he works from a university in Tehran. I am not sure if that means his book is banned in US.
I missed your post and raised similar concerns on how the OP uses “normative”. It struck me later that perhaps the word could be used in an epistemic sense, but even then I don’t see how that fits in with the OP itself.
It just seems like ID is science. Human intelligence seems cause effects dramatically unlike stochastic processes. It seems we can detect these different categories of effects. It seems inferring a designer implies other tests and predictions than inferring stochastic processes. It’s hard for me to see why ID is not science.
Additionally, I do not think ID is a particularly good apologetic. It is perfectly consistent with atheism (intelligent agency is just another physical cause like Tom English has argued), and any argument that would move from ID to theism applies equally well to most other scientific phenomena, i.e. where do matter and energy come from?
So, I would go the other direction and remove the religion from ID.
FWIW, there were whispers among the physics grad students and faculty that the Big Bang is wrong.
YEC physicist John Gidieon Hartnett who teaches at a secular university and has had several PhD students invited me to get a PhD under him. I just wasn’t able to make it happen.
He made critiques of the Big Bang that resonate with me and other critics of the Big Bang from basic physics.
At my undergrad Alma Mater, head of the Earth and Space observation department Menas Kafatos rejected the Big Bang. Two other professors, Sisur Roy and his brother rejected the Big Bang. My professor of QM, James Trefil, who promoted the Big Bang and Dark Matter, said he held out a little skepticism because respected colleagues expressed their doubts too — this was in Trefil’s book Dark Side of the Universe.
When Guth inflation was described to me in Cosmology class, I thought to myself — “Yikes, and they say YECs have outrageous ideas!!!”
That is the sentiment of several Young Earth Creationists, not to mention practically all Theistic Darwinists I know of except maybe Francis Collins who accepts Cosmological ID, but not Biological ID.
Thanks for your thougths.
Agreed. But I think that many scientists working in cosmology and fundamental physics tacitly posit that their own minds transcend nature. I once saw Sean Carroll present a picture of the early Universe — from without! He essentially laid claim to a God’s eye view.
Any putatively scientific account of a physical process including scientists-doing-science is paradoxical. I do not believe that there can be a logically consistent model of physicists doing the physics that led to the model.
To be clear, I am an advocate of epistemic humility, not transcendence of the mind.
I’ve been at odds with the idea of Specified Complexity as part of the modern incarnation of the design argument. Partly for simple reasons such as, the example pictured below which one could reasonably assume a human intelligence was responsible for making the dominos stand up that way. And this actually relates to the abiogenesis problem where early life molecules had to be oriented properly before being glued together to form the right kind of macro molecule.
If I asked “how much specified complexity is in the design of the upright dominos, I’m not so sure I could get a straight answer. But it is rather obvious this was not the result of arbitrary x, y, z , x-dot, y-dot, z-dot, phi, theta, rho, phi-dot, theta-dot, rho-dot classical coordinates.for each domino evolving over time. A similar difficulty emerges for abiogenesis. At least with regard to Vrichow’s cell theory and Pasteur’s “law of biogensis”, the improbability of cellular replicators (aka life) is supported by basic geometrical considerations — somewhat like the probability of building a house of cards.
Tom,
Could you elaborate? I can see why a mind would be incapable of holding a complete model of itself, but what about coarser models?
Eric,
Not according to Dembski. The non-physicality of intelligence is a built-in assumption of the explanatory filter. That’s why intelligence is the default conclusion after “Darwinian and other material mechanisms” have been excluded.
Sal,
The difference being that the inflationary hypothesis is motivated by observations, not scripture.