The Reasonableness of Atheism and Black Swans

As an ID proponent and creationist, the irony is that at the time in my life where I have the greatest level of faith in ID and creation, it is also the time in my life at some level I wish it were not true. I have concluded if the Christian God is the Intelligent Designer then he also makes the world a miserable place by design, that He has cursed this world because of Adam’s sin. See Malicious Intelligent Design.

Jesus prophesied of the intelligently designed outcome of humanity: “wars and rumors of wars..famines…pestilence…earthquakes.” If there is nuclear and biological weapons proliferation, overpopulation, destruction of natural resources in the next 500 years or less, things could get ugly. If such awful things are Intelligently Designed for the trajectory of planet Earth, on some level, I think it would almost be merciful if the atheists are right….

The reason I feel so much kinship with the atheists and agnostics at TSZ and elsewhere is that I share and value the skeptical mindset. Gullibility is not a virtue, skepticism is. A personal friend of Richard Dawkins was my professor and mentor who lifted me out of despair when I was about to flunk out of school. Another professor, James Trefil, who has spent some time fighting ID has been a mentor and friend. All to say, atheists and people of little religious affiliation (like Trefil) have been kind and highly positive influences on my life, and I thank God for them! Thus, though I disagree with atheists and agnostics, I find the wholesale demonization of their character highly repugnant — it’s like trash talking of my mentors, friends and family.

I have often found more wonder and solace in my science classes than I have on many Sunday mornings being screamed at by not-so-nice preachers. So despite my many disagreements with the regulars here, because I’ve enjoyed the academic climate in the sciences, I feel somewhat at home at TSZ….

Now, on to the main point of this essay! Like IDist Mike Gene, I find the atheist/agnostic viewpoint reasonable for the simple reason that most people don’t see miracles or God appearing in their every day lives if not their entire lives. It is as simple as that.

Naturalism would seem to me, given most everyone’s personal sample of events in the universe, to be a most reasonable position. The line of reasoning would be, “I don’t see miracles, I don’t see God, by way of extrapolation, I don’t think miracles and God exists. People who claim God exists must be mistaken or deluded or something else.”

The logic of such a viewpoint seems almost unassailable, and I nearly left the Christian faith 15 years ago when such simple logic was not really dealt with by my pastors and fellow parishioners. I had to re-examine such issues on my own, and the one way I found to frame the ID/Creation/Evolution issue is by arguing for the reasonableness of Black Swan events.

I will use the notion of Black Swans very loosely. The notion is stated here, and is identified with a financeer and academic by the name of Nasim Taleb. I have Taleb’s books on investing entitled Dynamic Hedging which is considered a classic monograph in mathematical finance. His math is almost impenetrable! He is something of a Super Quant. Any way:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.

The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:

1.The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.
2.The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).
3.The psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event’s massive role in historical affairs.

Unlike the earlier and broader “black swan problem” in philosophy (i.e. the problem of induction), Taleb’s “black swan theory” refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences.[1] More technically, in the scientific monograph Silent Risk , Taleb mathematically defines the black swan problem as “stemming from the use of degenerate metaprobability”.[2]
….
The phrase “black swan” derives from a Latin expression; its oldest known occurrence is the poet Juvenal’s characterization of something being “rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno” (“a rare bird in the lands and very much like a black swan”; 6.165).[3] When the phrase was coined, the black swan was presumed not to exist. The importance of the metaphor lies in its analogy to the fragility of any system of thought. A set of conclusions is potentially undone once any of its fundamental postulates is disproved. In this case, the observation of a single black swan would be the undoing of the logic of any system of thought, as well as any reasoning that followed from that underlying logic.

Juvenal’s phrase was a common expression in 16th century London as a statement of impossibility. The London expression derives from the Old World presumption that all swans must be white because all historical records of swans reported that they had white feathers.[4] In that context, a black swan was impossible or at least nonexistent. After Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans in Western Australia in 1697,[5] the term metamorphosed to connote that a perceived impossibility might later be disproven. Taleb notes that in the 19th century John Stuart Mill used the black swan logical fallacy as a new term to identify falsification.[6]

The very first question I looked at when I was having bouts of agnosticism was the question of origin of life. Now looking back, the real question being asked is “was OOL a long sequence of typical events or a black swan sequence of events.” Beyond OOL, one could go on to the question of biological evolution. If we assume Common Descent or Universal Common Ancestry (UCA), would evolution, as a matter of principle, proceed by typical or black swan events or a mix of such events (the stock market follows patterns of typical events punctuated by black swan events).

If natural selection is the mechanism of much of evolution, does the evolution of the major forms (like prokaryote vs. eukaryote, unicellular vs. multicellular, etc.) proceed by typical or black swan events?

[As a side note, when there is a Black Swan stock market crash, it isn’t a POOF, but a sequence of small steps adding up to an atypical set of events. Black Swan doesn’t necessarily imply POOF, but it can still be viewed as a highly exceptional phenomenon.]

Without getting into the naturalism vs. supernaturalism debate, one could at least make statements whether OOL, eukaryotic evolution (eukaryogenesis), multicellular evolution, evolution of Taxonomically Restricted Features (TRFs), Taxonomically Restricted Genes (TRGs), proceeded via many many typical events happening in sequence or a few (if not one) Black Swan event.

I personally believe, outside of the naturalism supernaturalism debate, that as a matter of principle, OOL, eukaryogenesis, emergence of multicellularity (especially animal multicellularity), must have transpired via Black Swan events. Why? The proverbial Chicken and Egg paradox which has been reframed in various incarnations and supplemented with notions such as Irreducible Complexity or Integrated Complexity or whatever. Behe is not alone in his notions of this sort of complexity, Andreas Wagner and Joe Thornton use similar language even though they thing such complexity is bridgeable by typical rather than Black Swan events.

When I do a sequence lookup at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center of Biotechnology Information (NCBI), it is very easy to see the hierarchical patterns that would, at first glance, confirm UCA! For example look at this diagram of Bone Morphogenetic Proteins (BMP) to see the hierarchical patterns:

BMP

From such studies, one could even construct Molecular Clock Hypotheses and state hypothesized rates of molecular evolution.

The problem however is that even if some organisms share so many genes, and even if these genes can be hierarchically laid out, there are genes that are restricted only to certain groups. We might refer to them as Taxonomically Restricted Genes (TRG). I much prefer the term TRG over “orphan gene” especially since some orphan genes seem to emerge without the necessity of Black Swan events and orphan genes are not well defined and orphan genes are only a subset of TRGs. I also coin the notion of Taxonomically Restricted Feature (TRF) since I believe many heritable features of biology are not solely genetic but have heritable cytoplasmic bases (like Post Translation modifications of proteins).

TRGs and TRFs sort of just poof onto the biological scene. How would we calibrate the molecular clock for such features? It goes “from zero to sixty” in a poof.

Finally, on the question of directly observed evolution, it seems to me, that evolution in the present is mostly of the reductive and exterminating variety. Rather than Dawkins Blind Watchmaker, I see a Blind Watch Destroyer. Rather than natural selection acting in cumulative modes, I natural selection acting in reductive and exterminating modes in the present day, in the lab and field.

For those reasons, even outside the naturalism vs. supernaturalism debate, I would think a reasonable inference is that many of the most important features of biology did not emerge via large collections of small typical events but rather via some Black Swan process in the past, not by any mechanisms we see in the present. It is not an argument from incredulity so much as a proof by contradiction.

If one accepts the reasonableness of Black Swan events as the cause of the major features of biology, it becomes possible to accept that these were miracles, and if Miracles there must be a Miracle Maker (aka God). But questions of God are outside science. However, I think the inference to Black Swan events for biology may well be science.

In sum, I think atheism is a reasonable position. I also think the viewpoint that biological emergence via Black Swan events is also a highly reasonable hypothesis even though we don’t see such Black Swans in every day life. The absence of such Black Swans is not necessarily evidence against Black Swans, especially if the Black Swan will bring coherence to the trajectory of biological evolution in the present day. That is to say, it seems to me things are evolving toward simplicity and death in the present day, ergo some other mechanism than what we see with our very own eyes was the cause of OOL and bridging of major gaps in the taxonomic groupings.

Of course such a Black Swan interpretation of biology may have theological implications, but formally speaking, I think inferring Black Swan hypotheses for biology is fair game in the realm of science to the extent it brings coherence to real-time observations in the present day.

775 thoughts on “The Reasonableness of Atheism and Black Swans

  1. stcordova,
    Regarding your point that the genome is deteriorating, can you cite evidence? I am skeptical that with the current level of understanding its contents and workings that this knowable at this point.

    I provided 3 lines of evidence regarding physical and mental fitness earlier which I provide links to in case you missed them.

    The first two lines are somewhat on the pop-science level:
    http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/the-reasonableness-of-atheism-and-black-swans/comment-page-12/#comment-110137

    The 3rd line is from a first rate biologist at Stanford:
    http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/the-reasonableness-of-atheism-and-black-swans/comment-page-12/#comment-110149

    I will now give you a 4th line:
    The next is from an elite scientist at the National Academy:

    hus, the preceding observations paint a rather stark picture. At least in highly industrialized societies, the impact of deleterious mutations is accumulating on a time scale that is approximately the same as that for scenarios associated with global warming—perhaps not of great concern over a span of one or two generations, but with very considerable consequences on time scales of tens of generations. Without a reduction in the germline transmission of deleterious mutations, the mean phenotypes of the residents of industrialized nations are likely to be rather different in just two or three centuries, with significant incapacitation at the morphological, physiological, and neurobiological levels. Ironically, the genetic future of mankind may reside predominantly in the gene pools of the least industrialized segments of society. Possible solutions to this problem, including multigenerational cryogenic storage and utilization of gametes and/or embryos, will raise significant ethical conflicts between short-term and long-term considerations.

    Michael Lynch
    http://www.pnas.org/content/107/3/961.full

    and

    A fifth line:

    http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/CSE/members/aeyrewalker/pdfs/EWNature99.pdf

    It has been suggested that humans may suffer a high genomic
    deleterious mutation rate. Here we test this hypothesis by applying a variant of a molecular approach to estimate the
    deleterious mutation rate in hominids from the level of selective
    constraint in DNA sequences. Under conservative assumptions,
    we estimate that an average of 4.2 amino-acid-altering mutations
    per diploid per generation have occurred in the human lineage
    since humans separated from chimpanzees. Of these mutations,
    we estimate that at least 38% have been eliminated by natural
    selection, indicating that there have been more than 1.6 new
    deleterious mutations per diploid genome per generation. Thus,
    the deleterious mutation rate specific to protein-coding sequences
    alone is close to the upper limit tolerable by a species such as
    humans that has a low reproductive rate, indicating that the
    effects of deleterious mutations may have combined synergistically.
    Furthermore, the level of selective constraint in hominid protein-
    coding sequences is atypically low. A large number of slightly
    deleterious mutations may therefore have become fixed in
    hominid lineages.

    It has been estimated that there are as many as 100 new mutations
    in the genome of each individual human. If even a small fraction of
    these mutations are deleterious and removed by selection, it is
    difficult to explain how human populations could have survived. If
    the effects of mutations act in a multiplicative manner, the propor-
    tion of individuals that become selectively eliminated from the
    population … is paradoxical in a species with a
    low reproductive rate.

    ….
    If deleterious new mutations are accumulating at present, this could
    have damaging consequences for human health, but this would
    depend critically on the frequency distribution of fitness effects of
    mutant alleles, about which we know little.

    The first elipsis (…) is because I couldn’t display the formula, but you can see it in the link and it is the very same formula at the end of my essay which I derived from first principles using the Poisson distribution:

    http://www.uncommondescent.com/genetics/fixation-rate-what-about-breaking-rate/

    And a sixth line:
    and not quite as forthright but with some speculation that it isn’t so bad:

    The high deleterious mutation rate in humans presents a paradox.If mutations interact multiplicatively, the genetic load associated with such a high U [number mutations per individual per generation] would be intolerable in species with a low rate of reproduction.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10978293

    To be fair Eyre-Walker, Keightly, Nachman and Crowell and others suggest some speculative solutions for why we might not be deteriorating, but the settling of the question is whether we are indeed getting sicker, weaker, dumber with each generation?

    I think we are. Just as humans age and die, I think genomes slowly age and die too. I don’t think, short of a black swan process, the deterioration is arrested for the simple reason that mutation in a genome is analogous to just randomly scrambling letters in a paragraph. Most of the random variation is damaging, not constructing of coherent writing.

    Even if selection is at work, it’s fighting a losing battle when the genomes are gigantic (not the puny ones that we often model in computer simulations like Dawkins WEASEL). There is a point if there is enough mutational damage per individual, no amount of killing the defective individuals will stop the deterioration if all the kids have some defects. As several of the authors I’ve cited have pointed out, the number of new small defects in each child may be in the ball park of 100 that the parents didn’t have. The bad just keeps accumulating!

    It’s not like I’m really eager to think the human race is dying. Hence, it doesn’t bother me if I’m wrong, I almost hope I am at some level, but I think I’m right.

    If you are skeptical, as I hope you are, you can ask those with opposing viewpoints why they think the human genome is improving. I acknowledge our technology is improving, but that may actually be making the genomes sicker since kids with juvenile diabetes are able to live due to medicine. I thank God for the medicines and I thank God for their lives, but if they go on to reproduce, they are a serious risk of passing on similar defects and more to their kids.

    Perhaps in light of these grim scientific realities you can see why I’ve found solace in my religious views.

    The 7th line is from the genetic engineer John Sanford, an Ivy League professor, whose gene gun was used to create most of the GMO’s on planet earth for a season. Sanford was an atheist and evolutionist before becoming a Christian and then a creationist. However, he knows a lot about genetics. His gene gun is featured in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. He argues we are deteriorating as well in this 3-minute video:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6dbgtEIe9A

  2. stcordova,

    I guess the problem might be betting the farm on YEC being true. You do seem pretty insulated against the counterfactuals, but if one happened to creep through and render the whole shebang unworkable for you (it certainly is for me!), pinning your hopes on the most difficult form of Christianity for the scientifically curious to sustain seems to carry a greater risk than TE.

  3. I think lots of sane people have doubts about the future of humans, but Lynch’s is the least worrisome.

  4. Allan:

    You do seem pretty insulated against the counterfactuals, but if one happened to creep through and render the whole shebang unworkable for you (it certainly is for me!), pinning your hopes on the most difficult form of Christianity for the scientifically curious to sustain seems to carry a greater risk than TE.

    He could always fall back on TE, I suppose. But having just questioned the Bible, finding it wanting on scientific issues, there’d be little excuse not to examine its theological claims with an equally wary eye.

    Sal, suppose we’re right and that both YEC and Christianity are false. In that case, would you rather know the truth or continue to believe in comfortable falsehoods?

  5. stcordova,

    I guess the problem might be betting the farm on YEC being true. You do seem pretty insulated against the counterfactuals, but if one happened to creep through and render the whole shebang unworkable for you (it certainly is for me!), pinning your hopes on the most difficult form of Christianity for the scientifically curious to sustain seems to carry a greater risk than TE.

    Thank you for responding. I really don’t like too much confrontation these days, I’d like to have more cooperative relationships.

    It was fun bashing the use of the 2nd law by IDists because for a brief moment I was at least on the same page as TSZ regulars.

    I might finally come around and bash CSI some more. Maybe we can be on the same page again… 🙂

    Till then I guess we’re on opposite sides of the discussion.

  6. In that case, would you rather know the truth

    I’d rather know the truth at least for a season and then I’d probably go out and get drunk after finding out so I won’t have to care.

    As I pointed out in the OP the is a dark dark side of YEC and Christianity that most don’t acknowledge:

    As an ID proponent and creationist, the irony is that at the time in my life where I have the greatest level of faith in ID and creation, it is also the time in my life at some level I wish it were not true. I have concluded if the Christian God is the Intelligent Designer then he also makes the world a miserable place by design, that He has cursed this world because of Adam’s sin. See Malicious Intelligent Design.

    Jesus prophesied of the intelligently designed outcome of humanity: “wars and rumors of wars..famines…pestilence…earthquakes.” If there is nuclear and biological weapons proliferation, overpopulation, destruction of natural resources in the next 500 years or less, things could get ugly. If such awful things are Intelligently Designed for the trajectory of planet Earth, on some level, I think it would almost be merciful if the atheists are right….

    You might complain I’m being hasty committing to an idea because we don’t know enough. That is a legitimate objection, but we’ll never have as many facts as we’d like to make the most important commitments in life.

    I’m not as worried about being wrong as I did 10 years ago. Of late I lament for most of humanity if I am right.

  7. stcordova,

    From your Stanford paper cited

    If the proper function of 2,000 to 5,000 genes are necessary for our intellectual ability, then in the simplest case the complex traits of emotional and intellectual fitness will drift with reduced selection at 2,000- to 5,000-times that of a trait specified by a single gene. Independent studies in humans using phenotypic methods have estimated that the germline suffers about one deleterious mutation per average protein-coding gene per 100,000 generations8-11. These are mostly point mutations that lead to compromise of gene function without totally inactivating it.

    Although you have cited evidence supporting your argument, I do not see yet experimental evidence that integrates DNA repair with proposed mutation rates. To understand this I think digging into the methods of mutation experiments is required. Although I cannot get over the hump of skepticism here, I think your argument is supported. I agree and have not seeing convincing evidence that the genome is improving. The third option is it in stasis?

  8. I do not see yet experimental evidence that integrates DNA repair with proposed mutation rates.

    I think you are right on that point.

    We might be able to have observational evidence now that whole genome sequencing is possible. The way to confirm this is to sequence the genomes from great grand father, grand father, father, son, great grand son…..

    So we might start to get a little more data.

    The third option is it in stasis?

    Stasis would be good. I don’t wish birth defects on anyone. But the redeeming thing is as far as we know, the new genetic defects per generation are mostly slight in effect.

    Right now, there are also a lot of non-genetic factors apparently also affecting human health, like the chemicals in the food we eat, the pollutants in air and water, etc.

    Regarding the DNA repair mechanisms, with intergenerational genome analysis (great grand father….great grand son), we can see how effective the repair mechanism are.

    Now there is a subtlety. It seems there are some mutations that appear to be designed to happen. That is, it looks like some of the copy mechanisms when making the cells for reproduction (germ cells) deliberately introduce some variation.

    The reason some believe this is that somatic cells (the ones not involved in reproduction) have such high fidelity copying whereas in the creation of the gametes, there seem to be almost deliberate variation. There is a side to this that may be good since we know some amount of genetic variation helps a population withstand a large variety of stresses.

    These designed variations then, I’d expect to be benign and possibly reversible over generations. But this is getting into really really speculative territory….so take that with table spoon of salt.

    http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/mutations-mtdna-may-not-be-rare-or-random-previously-believed

    This study was performed on an admittedly small test group of only two individuals, but if the results hold up to further study on larger groups it could have profound implications for genetic individuality. DNA is used as a marker for things like paternity testing, forensic testing, and determining risk for inherited diseases. If completely unrelated people produce the the same mutations in the same locations, it might impact how those genetic tests are interpreted.

  9. I made this comment in another thread in response to Petrushka’s question, and I think it is relevant in the current discussion.

    http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/id-falsifiable-not-science-not-positive-not-directly-testable/comment-page-2/#comment-107015

    Petrushka:

    Sal Cordova is mistaken, why haven’t mammals gone extinct?

    I responded:

    Auto renormalization. That is to say, just because something is genetically damaged, doesn’t mean the absolute fitness of the population keeps declining.

    In fact, because of modern technology, we can see for example, that even though there are more cases than in all history of kids living with juvenile diabetes, the number of kids with juvenile diabetes keeps increasing. The trait has increased its absolute fitness because of a change in environment even though we may not have a handle on it’s progress as far as relative fitness.

    So it is hypothetically possible the genome of mammals gets compromised, but in a non-competitive environment, absolute fitness can increase.

    Btw, that goes to show the problem of defining absolute fitness, it’s just a reproductive capacity measure without much environmental context.

    Here is a laboratory example of auto renormalization with the genome being utterly trashed but no reduction in “fitness” (reproductive capability, not really physical fitness in the medical sense).

    http://genetics.org/content/148/4/166

    n the 1950s, Wallace (1952, 1956) exposed caged Drosophila populations to continuous radiation accumulating to 250,000 r. The population accumulated a large number of recessive lethals, but its size was not reduced. This is perhaps not surprising in a species with a high reproductive potential. Nevertheless, although heavily mutagenized Drosophila populations showed no overt signs of genetic deterioration, they became weak competitors with nonmutagenized strains (Wijsman 1984). Thus, Wallace’s flies were indeed paying a price, but one that would have required a more rigorous environment to reveal.

    This was what I meant by autorenormalization. The genome can get trashed, but from a population genetics standpoint, it looks “fit” (note the scare quotes).

  10. stcordova,

    The DNA in the mitochondria (mtDNA) is passed down exclusively from the mother via the egg. The mitochondria is responsible for converting food into ATP, which the cells need for energy. Mutations that occur in mtDNA after birth should not affect the entire body but be tissue-specific, depending on where the mutation happened. This study claims that not only are mutations in mtDNA more common than previously thought, but the process may not be entirely random. Taking tissue samples from ten areas of the body from non related test subjects, the team found that the same mutations were found in the same three tissues.

    This is very interesting data. The chance of two individuals getting the same mutation is exceedingly small by random change. Will keep my eyes open for confirming papers. Thanks for this very interesting paper.

  11. colewd:
    Flint,

    Can you cite evidence for this argument?I am skeptical that this can be well understood at this point.

    Think of DNA repair as analogous to recovering from an illness. Whether or not you recover (or how completely you recover) isn’t going to be passed on, it involves only you as an individual. However, the ability to recover at all (most critters do not have this ability) IS something that can be passed on.

    You might note that critters lacking the ability to recover (for example, insects) still seem to do quite well for themselves.

  12. petrushka:
    Oh MY GOD! THE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION! How can I argue with that reference?

    Moron

    So I assume Haldane and Graur gave up on evolution and became young earth creationists. Surely you aren’t quote mining them.

    Is there some reason you can’t avoid hurling charges that you can’t support? As a DA you would suck big time.

  13. stcordova: I think if YEC is true, it would make the Bible more believable for me personally.

    There are numerous bibles that claim the earth was created in 4004 BC.

  14. Mung: There are numerous bibles that claim the earth was created in 4004 BC.

    Is this actually the case? I had always read that this number was calculated by Bishop Ussher, who managed the trick by (1) assuming the bible included a complete genealogy from Adam through Christ; and (2) assuming a generation length when ages of breeding were not provided.

  15. colewd:

    Thanks for the thoughtful response.My tentative thoughts here are that the difficulty in finding cause in biology is due the fact that we are not dealing with change (genomic) that has repeatable cause and effect.

    Strictly speaking, yes, genomic change does have “repeatable cause and effect”. The problem is that in the context of biology, the “causes” are so many & varied, that as a practical matter it’s awfully damned difficult to make the sort of accurate-to-15-decimal-places predictions for biology that can be made for quantum mechanics. Too many moving parts, too many interactions between ’em.

    The challenge is, to develop a real theory you need to be able to predict and this is very difficult without repeatability. The color of the swan is correlated with repeatability.

    And scientists who don’t use this “[color] swan” terminology are somehow unaware of repeatability? Come on, colewd. There is repeatability in biology, but it’s the repeatability of insurance companies (can tell you how many of their customers will break their legs, but never exactly which customers those will be) rather than the repeatability of an algebra problem in a textbook (where you always get the same answer, assuming you haven’t made any mistakes).

    I ask again: What in Mendel’s name is your friggin’ point?

    In Sal’s case he is saying repeatability (predictable cause and effect) in the case of genome change is a miracle.

    Hm. Are you actually saying that Cordova’s whole point with the “black swan” terminology is the bog-standard Creationist urge to drag his god-of-choice in by the heels as an unstated presupposition? If so, I think you’re right about that, and I think that’s a very good reason for real scientists to not adopt Cordova’s crypto-Creationist “black swan” terminology.

  16. Flint: Is this actually the case? I had always read that this number was calculated by Bishop Ussher, who managed the trick by (1) assuming the bible included a complete genealogy from Adam through Christ; and (2) assuming a generation length when ages of breeding were not provided.

    Yes, it was a calculation, but it was also included in numerous bibles. Therefore, it must be true. Sal is just a modern Ussher, imposing his calculations on the text and deriving his dates from them.

  17. keiths:

    Sal, suppose we’re right and that both YEC and Christianity are false. In that case, would you rather know the truth or continue to believe in comfortable falsehoods?

    Sal:

    I’d rather know the truth at least for a season and then I’d probably go out and get drunk after finding out so I won’t have to care.

    If so, then why do you cherry-pick? Why not look at the totality of the evidence and choose the hypothesis that fits best? (Hint: It isn’t YEC.)

    You’ve already acknowledged that the old earth/old universe views are more “evidentially sound” than YEC. So why are you still a YEC, when you say above that you’d “rather know the truth” than continue believing in comfortable falsehoods?

  18. stcordova,

    Of late I lament for most of humanity if I am right.

    There are problems around the corner for humanity as a whole regardless if you’re right or wrong. I’d say genetic deterioration is the least of it. But watching religious conservatives at work, more typically it’s “problem – what problem?”. I see a similar approach to evidence as I see from you – conclusion seems to precede the evaluation of facts, which are sifted in its light.

    I’m pessimistic because the kind of critical thinking I am familiar with seems lacking in a large swathe of the population. Even if there is something to be done, people will not do it, because of the overwhelming weight of the resistant mindset. But I’m reasonably sanguine. With us gone, diversity will recover. And no-one lives here forever, whether or not the population persists.

  19. stcordova,

    Thank you for responding. I really don’t like too much confrontation these days, I’d like to have more cooperative relationships.

    I don’t see debate as uncooperative. It is principally (for me) a leisure activity, a conversation. Without opposing views, it would not happen!

  20. Allan Miller: There are problems around the corner for humanity as a whole regardless if you’re right or wrong. I’d say genetic deterioration is the least of it

    Looking out of my window now at wall-to-wall sunshine and 15°C this morning, where going into February when I first moved here, it was normal to have snow and -15°C, with signs worldwide indicating climate change is accelerating, it still amazes me there are people who still think this is not happening.

    Sorry for OT 🙁

  21. Keiths:

    You’ve already acknowledged that the old earth/old universe views are more “evidentially sound” than YEC. So why are you still a YEC, when you say above that you’d “rather know the truth” than continue believing in comfortable falsehoods?

    Very good question.

    1. I’m most certainly did not cherry-pick the OOL nor Eukaryogenesis problem nor that of TRFs. I find it much harder to believe life was the result of any ordinary process than the constant insinuation that we’ve solved the origin and evolution of complexity just because we can concoct a phylogenetic diagram (like the one for Bone Morphogenetic proteins in the OP).

    We could vaguely invoke a black swan, but the Rube Goldberg quality of life strikes me as a miracle, therefore I believe quite easily there is a Miracle Maker. That part of YEC is most certainly sound, and as I pointed out, I really don’t think cumulative selection works on gigantic genomes, it will work for Dawkins WEASEL and Cordova’s remarkable Genetic Algorithm, but not on big multi cellular eukaryotic genomes.

    2. the C14, amino acid, dna, protein, lack of INTRA-species variation at the molecular level, the mtDNA studies, the out-of-mesopotamia vs. out of Africa Eve, the elements of the ANNIHILATOR model, confirm YLC (Young Life Creation) more so than Billions of Years Life.

    This suggest to me the genealogy of Christ which testifies of YLC is divinely inspired writing by the Creator himself.

    Because the YLC component of YEC looks confirmed to me, the cosmological aspects are easier to accept on faith now that I believe the sacred writings associated with the genealogy of Jesus in Matt 1 and Luke 3 are from God.

    You’ve already acknowledged that the old earth/old universe views are more “evidentially sound” than YEC.

    But the trend in discovery of items favorable to YEC has gotten better each and every year. I’m extrapolating my observation that when things looked bad, they got better with every year, and I’m seeing that trend confirmed on so many levels.

    YLC is confirmed as far as I’m concerned. YLC didn’t look that promising when in 2001 I started reading ID literature by Denton, Behe, Thaxton Bradley Olsen.

    So the YLC component of YEC is in good shape evidentially. But there are two major obstacles to YEC which I said are not on good ground.

    1. presences of long term radio-isotope decay products and absence of intermediate term radio isotopes

    2. the distant starlight problem

    I’ve seen a favorable trend in the evidence. As I said, I’m reconstructing an interferometry experiment that was done in other labs that shows some subtlety in General and Special Relativity. It’s surprisingly cheap compared to what it used to be. I’m doing this for my own curiosity to see if what people claim is actually true. I have enough background in general and special relativity to know they researchers of this stuff aren’t jokers even if they might be wrong. I’m having to shake off some cobb webs upstairs since it’s been a while since I had to use my EE undergrad for the experiment, but it’s now coming in handy.

    I regret a little bit I’ve neglected my first love in science, namely physics to be arguing biology (which I’m only starting to learn). An I really regret I don’t have hardly any chemistry under my belt.

    My math is OK, not to the level of my peers who seemed like super genius savants — I was just a mediocre genius dunce in my classes. But I love the topic and am can crawl through the math if I have to (my peers just seemed to stroll right through it).

    When I studied cosmology and general relativity and astrophysics, we were aware of problems in the cosmological models.

    When Adam Riess, a professor at my school gave lecture at the Applied Physics Lab where I took classes, he explained the research in dark energy that led to him receiving a Nobel Prize. In a great stroke of integrity, he said his discovery did not agree with theory by a factor of 10^60 (the figure could be as high as 10^120). He laughed and so did all of us, as if to admit, none of us really have a handle on what is going on. He was alluding to this problem:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant

    As noted above, the measured cosmological constant is smaller than this by a factor of 10−120. This discrepancy has been called “the worst theoretical prediction in the history of physics!”.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant

    So what Riess measured was way out of whack with theory! That’s just scratching the surface. I know there are many more problems. One can’t read the literature and not see problems from start to finish.

    To quote Allan Miller and apply it to myself, “I’m just a mathematical duffer.” I’m OK enough to sort of follow someone else’s math. I probably wouldn’t be much good with original math.

    Regarding the long term and intermediate term radio isotopes, there is a lot about nuclear processes we don’t know. I found out while in grad school, contrary to what most assume, under special conditions nuclear structure can be altered by chemical and electrical means. There are YEC models that suggest electrical activity beneath the surface of the Earth associated with Noah’s flood could give explain the anomaly that there is 70 times more Uranium on the continental crust than on the ocean floor. This anomaly doesn’t at all agree with the supernova theory of Uranium origins. So here are some facts most don’t realize:

    http://www.uncommondescent.com/physics/vodka-can-nuclear-structure-be-affected-by-electrical-chemical-and-biological-means/

    And this may explain the apparent age of some rocks using long term radioisotopes.

    When I read the following book in 2004, which was intended to prove the evolution of the solar system, and seeing each chapter end with “this is an unresolved problem in the evolution of the solar system”, it convinced me YEC had a better chance than it was given credit for. I paid $100 (new) for the book which you can get now for $5 (used), but I don’t regret buying it. It convinced me God specially created the solar system:
    http://www.amazon.com/Solar-System-Evolution-New-Perspective/dp/0521675669

    See this recent development which doesn’t at all surprise me since YEC predicts such anomalies:
    http://www.uncommondescent.com/privileged-planet/nature-makes-an-id-friendly-report-on-the-solar-system-officially-its-not-yec-friendly/

    PS
    The professor once assigned this paper to study regarding the Sachs-Wolfe effect which has some relevance to determining the nature of dark energy. I couldn’t figure out 10% of it, maybe only 2%, and I don’t think the rest of the class could either even though most of us had studied general relativity in the previous semester, this stuff was stratospheric! Sachs Wolfe Effect

  22. Sal, you seem to believe the C14 issue is settled in YECs favor.

    Have you read any of the responses here?

    I haven’t seen any response from you.

    Can you even characterize what we’ve said?

  23. I haven’t seen any response from you.

    Then you need to open your eyes. I gave pretty good responses. None of my responses has been refuted.

    Do you even understand the compounding interest math that relates to the contamination “solution”? Do you not understand why Lowe’s “solution” won’t work. Do you not understand a carbon contaminant that has C14 won’t be a contaminant for very long because C14 has a half life?

    Sorry to be harsh this time, but for you to say you haven’t seen my responses tells me your not comprehending what I wrote. You not comprehending could be my writing skills and typos, but that’s not the same as me not having a credible conceptual argument. If you really want to understand my argument, just ask what I wasn’t clear on. Don’t say I didn’t respond because I did.

  24. stcordova: Do you even understand the compounding interest math that relates to the contamination “solution”? Do you not understand why Lowe’s “solution” won’t work. Do you not understand a carbon contaminant that has C14 won’t be a contaminant for very long because C14 has a half life?

    Assertions are not evidence. Sal says contamination is impossible, so fuck reality.

    That’s just brain dead stupid, Sal.

    The apparent age of mineralized carbon is inverse to the mineral’s porosity.

    Diamonds are old, anthracite is usually old, limestone is old. Soft coal does not test so old.

    Surprise.

  25. Flint,

    The difference in DNA repair from our immune system is that it is in all our cells (that have a nucleus) including reproductive ones. Immune response is cell specific.

  26. cubist,

    I am trying to focus on Sal’s ideas and not his YEC world view. I think he is a creative thinker and has a strong knowledge base. I thought his black swan concept was creative and allowed for interesting discussion.

    I completely agree with you that there is repeatability in biology. The cell cycle is a perfect example. The issue is identifying a repeatable mechanism for adding functional sequences to the genome. The lack of a viable mathematical model is evidence to me that the mechanism has not been identified yet.

  27. 2. the C14, amino acid, dna, protein, lack of INTRA-species variation at the molecular level, the mtDNA studies, the out-of-mesopotamia vs. out of Africa Eve, the elements of the ANNIHILATOR model, confirm YLC (Young Life Creation) more so than Billions of Years Life.

    Sal, I disagree with just about everything quoted here, but the part I bolded is just bonkers. Intra-species variation at the molecular level is ubiquitous. Its prevalence is not equal at every locus or in every species (nor would it be expected to be), but it is ubiquitous nonetheless. In fact, the amount of polymorpshim found among different populations of the same species came as a major surprise to at least some evolutionary biologists once they were able to start collecting molecular data in the 1960’s. See Lewontin and Hubby 1966 for a classic example.

  28. colewd: I am trying to focus on Sal’s ideas and not his YEC world view. I think he is a creative thinker and has a strong knowledge base. I thought his black swan concept was creative and allowed for interesting discussion.

    I think Sal has repackaged god of the gaps as a black swan; repackaged the creationist Second Law argument as genetic deterioration, and completely ignored 200 years of geology, physics and cosmology.

  29. Dave Carlson:

    Intra-species variation at the molecular level is ubiquitous. Its prevalence is not equal at every locus or in every species (nor would it be expected to be), but it is ubiquitous nonetheless. In fact, the amount of polymorpshim found among different populations of the same species came as a major surprise to at least some evolutionary biologists once they were able to start collecting molecular data in the 1960’s. See Lewontin and Hubby 1966 for a classic example.

    I can understand the confusion from what I’m saying, and the fault lies with my not expressing the issue clearly.

    As I mentioned E. Coli has only 20% conservation. That is huge INTRA-species variation.

    At issue however are the areas that are identical (conserved within the E. Coli core) that are different than other bacteria and have been used as interspecies phylogenetic markers such as the aaRS gene set.

    Sal, I disagree with just about everything quoted here, but the part I bolded is just bonkers.

    The fault is mine for not being more clear. What I was referring to was the same thing you said you thought might be intriguing, that is genes that are used as phylogenetic markers that lack intra species variation.

    Thank you for your criticism.

  30. stcordova: 2. the C14, amino acid, dna, protein, lack of INTRA-species variation at the molecular level, the mtDNA studies, the out-of-mesopotamia vs. out of Africa Eve, the elements of the ANNIHILATOR model, confirm YLC (Young Life Creation) more so than Billions of Years Life.

    This suggest to me the genealogy of Christ which testifies of YLC is divinely inspired writing by the Creator himself

    Geneology? What geneology?
    Christ does not have a geneology since he was (allegedely) an incarnation of a nonhuman “father”. Joseph’s lineage as reported has nothing to do with Jesus’ lineage; Joseph didn’t have anything to do with Mary’s fertilization, nor provide any material to Jesus’ hypothetical DNA.

    The hoked-up and two disagreeing lineages from David to Joseph is part of the evidence that christianity is actually fake. It was a cult – exactly like Mormonism is – pitched to the gullible and impoverished. Like ol’ Joe Smith, the first tellers of the gospel couldn’t be bothered to keep their stories straight within the narrative, much less coherent with reality, but that turned out not to matter since their followers weren’t much for clear thinking.

  31. Assertions are not evidence. Sal says contamination is impossible, so fuck reality.

    I didn’t say that. If C14 contaminates a buried fossil it has only a limited time to function as a contaminant since C14 has a 5730 half-life.

    The C14 contaminant if brought into the buried fossil by a carbon bearing source must add to the mass of the carbon in the fossil, but then this contaminant then becomes C14-free in short order relative to geological time.

    So now we have the fossil plus a little more c14-free carbon contaminant. To maintain a level of C14 contaminant, one just has to keep adding more and more contaminant at an exponential rate.

    So how is it most of the carboniferous era fossils (around 300 million years ago) have C14 traces that are inconsistent with long ages?

    Lowe and other pointed out radiogenic sources can’t be the cause of C14 contamination. If anything, TalkOrigin cherry picked out that part of Lowe’s paper and declared radiogenic origins (like uranium and thorium) as a source even though Lowe refuted that argument. So why didn’t you call out the cherry picking at TalkOrigins?

    What is also ruled out is that the primary cause of the anomaly is in the laboratory processing and extraction. I showed why some of the contamination argument due primarily to processing is absurd especially for hard fossils like marble.

    You still may not agree, but you can’t say I didn’t respond.

  32. Diamonds are old, anthracite is usually old, limestone is old. Soft coal does not test so old.

    Surprise.

    C14 is in diamonds. John Hartnett evaluated the responses in favor of the YEC interpretation:

    Old-earth creationist Kirk Bertsche has been critical of the RATE work on Carbon-14 dating diamonds, which indicate that they are not billions of years old, but less than 56,000 years (with evolutionary assumptions) and less than 7000 years old (with the correct biblical assumptions).

    Btw, John Hartnett is a real scientist. He’s landed almost 6 million in research grants:

    http://www.uncommondescent.com/creationism/yec-john-harnett-accumulates-almost-5-7-million-dollars-in-science-grants/

  33. stcordova: You still may not agree, but you can’t say I didn’t respond.

    You responded to your own straw man, but not to my objection.

  34. Allan Miller: I’m pessimistic because the kind of critical thinking I am familiar with seems lacking in a large swathe of the population.

    People seem to think that being critical (skeptical) is the same thing as thinking critically.

  35. stcordova: C14 is in diamonds.John Hartnett evaluated the responses in favor of the YEC interpretation:
    Btw, John Hartnett is a real scientist.He’s landed almost 6 million in research grants:
    http://www.uncommondescent.com/creationism/yec-john-harnett-accumulates-almost-5-7-million-dollars-in-science-grants/

    You neglect to respond to my argument. The less porous the mineral, the older it measures. 56,000 years is near background. The more carefully you prepare diamond samples, the closer to background.

    It’s really this simple, Sal: The less porous the mineral, the older it measures.

    [edited for more/less typo]

  36. stcordova: >

    C14 is in diamonds.John Hartnett evaluated the responses in favor of the YEC interpretation:

    Btw, John Hartnett is a real scientist.He’s landed almost 6 million in research grants:

    http://www.uncommondescent.com/creationism/yec-john-harnett-accumulates-almost-5-7-million-dollars-in-science-grants/

    John Harnett can be a “real scientist” and have garnered “real research grants” while simultaneously being a lying sack of shit biblical creationist. It’s not like we haven’t seen that kind of act before.

    It’s yet another fallacy of argument from authority on your part.

  37. I have publicly acknowledged the problem of distant starlight for YEC:

    http://www.uncommondescent.com/creationism/distant-starlight-the-thorn-in-the-side-of-yec-can-there-be-a-middle-ground/
    Distant Starlight, the thorn in the side of YEC — can there be a middle ground?

    There are many devout Jews and Christians who believe the universe is old. Unlike Darwinism, the presumption of an old universe has real support from science. Philosophically, something as grand and as powerful as the entire universe would reasonably seem to be eternal. Standard thermodynamics and the Big Bang hypothesis changed all that, and the age of the universe is no longer viewed as eternal. Perhaps God did not want us to believe the Cosmos is all powerful and eternal, but rather transient and passing. Thermodynamics tells us the stars cannot burn forever, and thus thermodynamics has left us evidence that the known cosmos is not eternal…

    As much as Young Earth Creationists (YECs) hate the Big Bang, the Big Bang was a step in the YEC direction in that the universe became a lot younger in the view of mainstream science (from eternal to finite age). But to this day, YEC cannot be believed with the same level of conviction as other creationist ideas. Old Earth Creationists (OECs) would gladly accept YEC if science supported it, but the problem is the evidence in hand does not make a convincing case. The ID community has a very large OEC component.

    So how is distant starlight a thorn in the side of YEC? The farthest we can use parallax to estimate the distance to stars is on the order of 400 light years. Beyond parallax, we can estimate distances based on the apparent brightness of stars. Dimmer stars are presumed farther away, and using some math and distances estimated using this method, we estimate some stars are on the order of several million light years away. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_distance_ladder

    If the speed of light is constant over the age of the universe and constant at every location in the universe, then a straight forward calculation says the universe must be several million years old at least (if not billions).

    Some will say, “the speed of light might have been faster in the past or have different speeds in various locations in the universe or both.” That’s all well and good, but where is the convincing evidence of this? There are only small threads of evidence for this. Here are some:

    1. distant galaxies structurally look about the same age as galaxies close to us. If the speed of light were constant, we should see an evolutionary sequence of galaxies as we compare the farthest ones to the closest ones. The evolutionary sequence is missing. The distant galaxies look a little bluer, but structurally they look distressingly fully formed! This anomaly helps the YEC case but is not a slam dunk by any means.

    2. The galaxies have preserved spirals that should have been erased by now because of rotation based on standard gravitational dynamics. Exotic solutions like dark matter and modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) and even Carmeli cosmology have tried to resolve this, but they all suffer from difficulties of direct testability. Many YECs accept dark matter, but if the dark matter isn’t properly distributed, it won’t solve the erasure problem of spiral galaxies. This anomaly also helps the YEC case but is not a slam dunk by any means.

  38. stcordova: I can understand the confusion from what I’m saying, and the fault lies with my not expressing the issue clearly.

    You’re showing signs of growth Salvador, please don’t stop.

  39. hotshoe_: Like ol’ Joe Smith, the first tellers of the gospel couldn’t be bothered to keep their stories straight within the narrative, much less coherent with reality, but that turned out not to matter since their followers weren’t much for clear thinking.

    So you think Christianity was started by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Don’t be daft.

  40. petrushka,

    Thanks for the paper. This will be interesting to follow.

    I think Sal has repackaged god of the gaps as a black swan; repackaged the creationist Second Law argument as genetic deterioration, and completely ignored 200 years of geology, physics and cosmology.

    If you say repackaged a god of the gaps argument I agree with you. Non the less these arguments are important to shake out the weakness of the evolutionary hypothesis. The way Sal re packaged it got me to think about the problem differently which was useful. As for ignoring 200 years of geology physics cosmology, I have enjoyed you guys debating the detail here. Personally I think the YEC view is challenging but enjoy lively discourse of the evidence.

  41. petrushka: You neglect to respond to my argument. The less porous the mineral, the older it measures. 56,000 years is near background. The more carefully you prepare diamond samples, the closer to background.

    This whole line of argument from Sal is beyond stupid. Why would a YEC even try to use C14 dates for anything? We accept the basic outline of C14 dating because we understand that atomic theory predicts some unstable proton-neutron nuclei will break up at a measurable rate and with measurable results (in C14, results in one N14 atom plus release of one low-energy beta particle, not usually detected by Geiger counters but by liquid scintillation counting). We know with as much certainty as we know anything about our world that C14 dating works: we’ve validated C14 dates with known historical objects, for example, wood taken from tombs of specific Egyptian kings. When C14 dates say that a scrap of parchment or linen from the Dead Sea scrolls is two thousand years old, the creationist believes the dating method is satisfactory. But when the same method says that pigments in cave paintings date back to 30000+ years, the creationist ignore the science (because it’s much too old for their blinkered biblical view).

    Sal doesn’t completely ignore other, more long range dating methods. He’s repeated at least twice that he’s aware of long-term radio-isotope decay. But somehow he just compartmentalizes that away, and only looks at those C14 dates which appear to show an object is younger than we expect. He never actually looks at things which appear to be older than he expects!

    Sal should be smart enough to see that C14 dates are useless to his argument. IF C14 dates are generally reliable (which they are, both in relation to the whole of atomic theory, and in controlled lab tests against known samples) then there is huge amount of stuff in our world which is at least three times older than Sal’s biblical time limits.

  42. Petrushka:

    I think Sal has repackaged god of the gaps as a black swan;

    Yes, in a manner of speaking. The problem is the gaps are not even acknowledged to exist. I used the Black Swan to say, even if one were not a creationist, the data indicate a hypothetical Black Swan had to be in operation.

    There is some agreement that there are issues with:

    1. OOL
    2. Eukaryogenesis

    I put this on the table, but not much discussion:

    3. TRFs (like the insulin regulated metabolism in vetebrates, the liver in vetebrates, the spliceosome and sliceosomal intons, etc. etc.) But the TRF issue was discussed much at all, but I think these too are black swans. Behe is not a creationist, but basically instead of Black Swans he argues for Black Boxes. 🙂

    4. lack of INTRA-species variation in genes used as phylogenetic markers (Dave Carlson had to correct me on the way I stated the problem, I hope it’s a little clearer now what I meant).

  43. The whole C14 shtick makes me think Salvador’s YEC roots go way back farther than he admits. But I gave up YEC before YEC websites sprung up all over the internet and was never motivated to follow YEC arguments since, so who knows what’s still out there hanging around.

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