I guess many folks here are familiar with Dr (of philosophy) Vincent Torley as a contributor of many posts at Uncommon Descent now operated by one Barry Arrington.
Vincent strikes me as a genuinely nice guy whose views are very different from mine on many issues. Possibly one of his most remarked-upon idiosyncracies is his tendency to publish exceedingly long posts at Uncommon Descent but (leaving Joseph of Cupertino in the air for a moment) lately Vincent has become a little more reflective on the merits of “Intelligent Design” as some sort of alternative or rival to mainstream biology. His latest post at Uncommon Descent came to my attention after it mysteriously (in the sense of so far without explanation) disappeared from the blog. Hat-tips to Seversky and REC at AtBC for spotting it before it disappeared. I then happened to see Vincent’s response to a question, providing a link to his Angelfire site and his article, before that comment too disappeared.
Vincent’s post, entitled Undeniable packs a powerful punch, but doesn’t land a knockout is a review of Douglas Axe’s book Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed published earlier this year. I have to say, I missed the event and have only just read the excerpt provided by Amazon’s Kindle bookstore. The snippet did not enthuse me to buy the book, so I can’t say if Vincent’s review is a fair one. It is certainly comprehensive (OK it’s long!).
He starts with fulsome praise:
When I first read Undeniable, I was greatly impressed by its limpid prose, the clarity of its exposition, and the passion with which the author makes his case. Seldom have I seen such an elegantly written book, which people from all walks of life can appreciate. I have no doubt that it will sell well for many years to come, and I have to say that it makes the best case for Intelligent Design at the popular level of any book I’ve ever seen.
But then has some forthright criticism to make:
Nevertheless – and I have to say this – the book contains numerous mathematical, scientific and philosophical blunders, which a sharp-eyed critic could easily spot.
then proceeds to specific points in some detail.
I find it refreshing and a little surprising that Vincent was so forthright in his public criticism and I find it not at all surprising that Barry Arrington has deleted the article at UD and all references to the original that appeared subsequently. There are two related issues here; Axe’s book, Undeniable – its merits and Vincent’s review – and the suppression of Vincent’s article by Barry Arrington but perhaps this thread will suffice to accommodate discussion on both. I’ll email Vincent to let him know about this thread as he may like to join in.
[This post was a bit rushed as I was short of time. Please point out errors and ommissions as needed]
There are hybrids within Zonotrichia, but they are vanishingly rare, to the point that when one is found it’s considered worthy of a publication.
But what puzzles me here is what point there was in asking about them.
Why is that relevant? Did the origin of life depend on a particular single protein sequence? Which one? If you can’t say, why is it even relevant?
Do you have examples of scientific theories that are not testable? Surely you are not talking about evolutionary theory. ID theory, on the other hand…
Hi everyone,
Thanks especially to Joe Felsenstein, Kantian Naturalist and Alan Miller for their comments.
What prompted my query about beneficial mutations was this post at ENV:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/08/a_billion_genes103091.html
Ian Musgrave calculates that 238 mutations have been fixed in the human line since the human-ape split: http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/07/haldanes-nondil.html
If we knew the approximate proportion of beneficial mutations that get fixed in the human population, then we could estimate how many beneficial mutations have occurred in the human-ape lineage since the split. Since we can also calculate the number of neutral mutations since the split, then that should enable us to calculate the percentage of mutations in human beings which are beneficial.
Here’s my ballpark estimate. Let’s assume the human population throughout most of the Stone Age was about 500,000, until 50,000 years ago, when human populations began to expand rapidly (according to research by Hawks et al. and also Hammer et al.). Let’s also assume that 200 of the 238 mutations that got fixed in the human line were fixed by then. The effective (as opposed to census) human population size is about 10,000. Let’s assume that the typical selection advantage of a beneficial human mutation is 0.01. Then using a result of Haldane’s, the likelihood of a beneficial mutation being fixed in the Stone Age would have been 2s.(Ne/N) = 2×0.01x(10,000/500,000), or 0.0004 or 1 in 2,500. That gives us a total of 200×2,500 or 500,000 beneficial mutations during the Stone Age, up until about 50,000 years ago. For neutral mutations, about 100 get fixed in the human population in every generation. But a similar number occur in each human individual per generation, so in a population of 500,000 individuals, the fixation probability would be 1/2N (I think) or 1 in 1,000,000. Since (according to Larry Moran – see http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/2014/02/why-are-human-and-chimpanzeebonobo.html ) about 22,400,000 neutral mutations have been fixed in the human line since the human-ape split, and nearly all of these would have been fixed before 50,000 years ago, then the total number of neutral mutations in the human line up until 50,000 years ago would have been 22,400,000,000,000, compared to 500,000 beneficial mutations. That means the ratio of beneficial human mutations (s=.01 or greater) to neutral mutations is 0.5/22,400,000 or 1/44,800,000. That’s about 1 in 50,000,000. Let’s assume that ratio still holds true today. The Exome Aggregation Consortium recently surveyed 1.2 billion genes from 60,706 individuals and identified 7.5 million mutations (mostly neutral), so I would estimate that they’d need to survey about six times that number before identifying a beneficial human mutation with s=0.01 or greater. Any obvious flaws in my calculation? I know almost nothing about genetics, so I’m sure I’ve made some, but anyway, that’s my estimate.
Maybe someone can do better.
Acartia,
Ever heard of string theory?
vjtorley,
How could one determine if a mutation was neutral?
But of course that is precisely what the entire field under discussion here is about: How did this apparently designed looking world actually come to look that way? I gather this young Darwin fellow had some ideas about this a few years back, and I understand a couple other folks have looked into these things since then.
phoodoo,
https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/will-the-lhc-be-able-to-test-string-theory-869e6be00e1f#.k2vji0w0q
As someone who was just recently booted from UD (sometime Wednesday night) I come here looking for a good discussion. And found it. I should not have bothered with UD; it’s like I’ve been drinking from a muddy puddle until it dried up, only to turn around find myself facing a tavern. Dope-slap myself and head on in.
sean s.
Welcome.
As Tom Lehrer might say, the internet is like a sewer; what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
John Harshman,
I am trying to understand Joe’s argument.
Richardthughes,
Terrific, you have just shown that even scientists agree that maybe they can’t test string theory.
Will you be cramming your other foot into your mouth soon Richard?
Richardthughes,
Maybe you should have checked the first link that popped up when you typed (your wife) “Is string theory testable” into google.
Is String Theory Testable. Not Even Wrong
Its by those guys you call a scientist!
OMagain,
The origin of life depends on molecules that can rapidly convert energy to work and a continuous production of these molecules.
Evolution depends on the invention of molecules that are produced in rapid production and can perform new innovative types of work.
Enzymes are an example of molecules that can perform rapid chemical reactions necessary to sustain life. Since these molecules have a life span, life requires that they can be continuously reproduced.
Is there another way to create macro molecules rapidly like enzymes without a replication system that we see in all life forms?
Do you have another way of sustaining a living organism other than a sequential blueprint (DNA) of the molecules that are required to sustain life?
This seems wrong to me. Enzymes are like matchmakers. They bind molecules that might react with each other anyway but, without the enzyme acting as catalyst, they might never meet, or meet so rarely, that the reaction is too slow.
sean samis,
Hi Sean, welcome to TSZ.
Or you could link to something contemporary:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151216-physicists-and-philosophers-debate-the-boundaries-of-science/
you’ve linked to the old work of one man, Phaildoo. Would you like me to teach you how Google works?
I see a ‘maybe’ in there Phoodoo. Does that make it untestable?
Do I see a “maybe” in your comment? Have you just defeated yourself again? You’ve moved from a universal negative to a hedge.
Lulz. Funny how children take their ideas from grown ups:
Yes.
Bonus: An article 7 years more recent than phoodoo’s ‘top of google search!!!11111″ choice: http://phys.org/news/2014-01-scientists-theory.html
“Scientists find a practical test for string theory”
Welcome from Acartia, William Spearshake, Tintinnid, Indiana Effigy, Ziggy Lorenc, Rationality’s Bane, and a cast of hundreds. 🙂
I see that you ran afoul of batshitcrazy77. When he can’t win a debate (which is, never) he asks Barry to have the person banned. But I must admit that I take a sick pleasure in pushing his and Mullings buttons.
Go on. Why does information about hybridization in the genus Zonotrichia help you understand Joe’s argument?
Forgot about this:
The term you want is evolutionary computation, not genetic algorithms. Unfortunately, there is not an article on evolutionary computation in Scholarpedia, and the article in Wikipedia is munged. The introductions to EC that come first to my mind are technical. Perhaps someone else will jump in with a recommendation. As for functional coherence, I got the impression, reading your review (perhaps not closely enough), that it is a rebranding of irreducible complexity — a quality, not a quantity. Does Axe define a measure of the degree of functional coherence in a system?
(Emphasis added.) Circularity is lurking, if not present. What is your basis for saying that more X requires more intelligence (whatever that is)? Are you saying that we are vastly more intelligent than the Ancient Greeks, or that the greater X in our artifacts is only apparent, not real? Looking around my living room, I can’t find anything that I’m sure one person knows how to make out of raw materials (no tools given). No one person knows how to make the device you are using to read this comment. What “intelligence” caused it to occur? From the perspective of Plato, is it a super-intelligence?
It seems to me that your use of intelligence is freewheeling even from a religio-philosophical perspective. Although Aristotle’s notion of active intellect reaches many Christians by way of Aquinas, Plato’s notion of passive intellect reaches many Christians by way of Augustine. I’m out of my depth here, but I know enough to know that the difference ought not be swept under the rug. It seems that the passive intellect of Augustine (adapting Plato) is not itself a cause of anything.
I hope that what you mean by correct is “coherent.” Saying that intelligence causes living things to do what we regard as intelligent is a hair’s breadth away from saying that life causes living things to live. (What living thing is devoid of intelligence? Many people, including me, answer none. Most ID proponents restrict intelligence to humans — a pretty clear sign that they secretly regard it as a component or a property of the soul.) I genuinely believe that treating intelligence as a cause is vitalism. If you think otherwise, I’d like very much to hear what you have to say.
ETA: I haven’t investigated the history, but I cannot imagine how the rejection of vitalism in biology would not have had a heavy impact on scientific psychology.
Anyone here other than Vincent actually read Axe’s latest book? Anyone?
I hate ignorant people too. If only there were a rule here at TSZ against actually being ignorant. But alas, the best they can do is tell us not to call people ignorant.
Of course if you’re ignorant of the rules, or just don’t care about the rules…
Could we change the text of Ignore Commenter to Ignorant Commenter?
ETA: There’s no rule against celebrating ignorance.
There is something fundamentally wrong with how anti-ID “skeptics” use probabilities. There is no physical law which prevents complex functional arrangements of parts coming together to form a functional whole as if by magic. Even Boltzmann knew this.
LoL. Wagner’s book is on the origin of life is it? Or is there some new rule here now that limits intelligent design to evolution?
Maybe they picked up that practice from evolutionists.
Has anyone here suggested that s/he was responding to the book rather than (a) the review and (b) Axe’s previous publications?
Might you bother telling us whether he has saved up a monumental scientific discovery, to report in the book? As best I can tell from the promotion at the DI and at UD, Axe still thinks his Big Deal is a project he did before the Biologic Institute was established.
You will not goad me into funding Axe. If it turns out that the book contains something new, other than Axe’s claim that intuition is reliable (about as clear an indication you’ll ever get that he’s an engineer, not a scientist), then I might borrow it from the library. (The library system presently does not own a copy, and I won’t file an interlibrary loan request. Libraries sometimes buy books when they get ILL requests.)
Random with respect to fitness in itself does not avoid reification of the concept of chance. So it in fact could be a metaphysical assertion.
But I agree with the general sentiment. Of course I disagree that it’s something unique to ID and never something that is done by the opponents of ID.
R.C. Sproul has a nice book on the subject:
Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology
If it’s where I work, they are likely searching for a parking space.
Kill your time here instead of at UD, and it dies a less agonizing death.
Sounds a tad baraminological, doesn’t it?
When is the last time I made any comment at all at UD?
Let me remind everyone that I created an OP here at TSZ to discuss a topic and that OP was closed to comments by Elizabeth because it (allegedly) violated the rules.
And yet here we have Alan, a moderator who supported Elizabeth’s decision, starting an OP to discuss the goings on at UD. So I don’t feel obligated to say squat to Barry or about Barry just to please people here. What people choose to infer from that is out of my control.
That’s definitely not where they picked up the practice of using low probabilities to impugn nature instead of the model.
Mung,
He was discussing a paper, not UD. The medium is not the message.
God forbid, Tom, that anyone actually read the book when they have a review of it they can read. I wonder why I don’t just spend all my time on Amazon reading reviews.
It’s touching to see how people who were never going to read the book in the first place now find a reason in VJT’s review of it to not read it anyways. 🙂
I guess that all it takes to be uncritically accepted here at TSZ is to be critical of ID.
Just a question for you. Are Torley’s quotes of the book accurate/verbatim? If they are, that’s all I need to know and you need to STFU
Axe’s book costs 13.00 on Kindle. Meanwhile, Design by Evolution: Advances in Evolutionary Design costs 179.00. That’s more than 13 x 13. So you’ll get no sympathy from me on that score Tom.
Perhaps we are talking past one another.
But everyone here knows that the first cell could not possibly have been complex. There simply must be a step by step gradual sequence starting with the very simple and building on that in order to get to the complex. Tell me it isn’t so.
That’s a probabilistic argument. About nature and how nature works. In that respect, it’s also a metaphysical argument. Don’t you agree?
Let me see if I can’t channel hotshoe_ here …
Actually, we are talking about lack of belief in “x’s” or “X”. Axeithm.
I don’t see why this is a problem. If there was not an absence of consciousness we wouldn’t know about consciousness at all.
I think it’s time to ignore Mung too. FFS, get a grip
Trial and error are well-accepted means to accomplish a robust design. There’s no reason any ID advocate should abandon trial and error as being relevant in the design process. Do you think Dawkins wrote his Weasel program in one go with no errors?
red – green – refactor
Look it up.
We can rule them out because they are just too improbable?
Why on earth would you point him to EC, a much broader field than GA’s? Do GA’s just fail at building functional coherence?
Mung,
It seems to me that the matter of physical chance is highly relevant to demarcation of science. We can falsify a claim that something occurs by chance, but never verify it. I don’t see what acceptance of such a claim contributes to science. I’m inclined to say that a scientific claim should be both falsifiable and verifiable. There should be the possibility that empirical evidence works both for and against acceptance of the claim. The reason that’s not a firm conclusion is that I haven’t studied the arguments regarding string theory. Note that my thinking on this is no longer driven by ID, though ID is what originally got me thinking.