Yet Again: Intelligence of the Gaps. Part II

(This post is still undergoing correction and enhancement)

NAID thinker, Granville Sewell, is still using
 a God-of the gaps an Intelligence-of-the-gaps model
although like other NAIDs he will probably deny it. 

 

(See here for Part I)

I've said the foregoing before, but I'll say it again...... It was quite a big shock to a politically niave person such as myself to discover how politicized the North American Intelligent Design  (NAID) tribe were. I was being naïve no doubt but I've slowly become aware that NAID's "eggs-all-in-one-basket" anti-evolutionism not only stems from an intelligence-of-the-gaps model of creation (denied of course) but it is also a shout of protest against the hostility of the academic community who have by and large put all their eggs in the pro-evolution basket. The natural extension of NAID's political affiliations has lead them to also take onboard climate science scepticism and vaccination scepticism. But to their credit I'm very glad to see that they are not part of the fanatical anti-science jamboree of Ken Ham's Young Earthist cult.

Nevertheless for NAIDs the consequences are that they have become politically unwoke, so much so perhaps that even a traditionalist and conservative (small "c") like myself would look "woke". In fact with narcissist Donald Trump at the helm of their loose right-wing coalition I might even look like a "communist". What an unwoke joke!

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NAID Granville Sewell, who is the subject of this series, appears to be typical: For several years he has repeatedly attempted to refute bog-standard evolutionary theory using the second law of thermodynamics as a theoretical way of undermining evolution and then to fill the explanatory spaces in natural history with "intelligent agency". NAID personnel will deny that they are using an intelligence-of-the-gaps model but whenever I look at what they are doing it turns out that they are thinking god intelligence-of-the-gaps. It is ironic that the reason for this intelligence-of-the-gaps thinking stem, I believe, from deep intuitions that NAIDs actually share with atheists: Viz: that if it can be shown that the laws of physics are descriptively complete - that is, those laws can successfully describe all that happens in & with space and time - then the intuition is that God's creative role is redundant (*1). The upshot is that atheists are therefore anxious to fill in any gaps in the applicability of the physical laws, whereas the NAID community have committed themselves to postulating gaps in natural history that can only be populated with the work of intelligence. This has imposed on the NAID community a blind natural forces vs intelligent agency dichotomy. 

It is this cultural context which is the cue for Granville Sewel's mission to show that the second law of thermodynamics proves those blind-natural-forces (sic) have no creative efficacy and therefore demands intelligent interventions. But of course as I've so often said this neglects the Christian view that those so-called natural forces have been created by the transcend intelligence of an Omnigod; it is then anybody's guess as to just how much this wild-card of genius has incorporated His thinking into those "blind (sic) natural forces".

Anyway, let me continue critiquing the following post by Granville Sewel.....

Life and the Principle Behind the Second Law | Science and Culture Today

Note: The emphases in the quotes below are mine. 

GRANVILLE: Extension to Open Systems. So does the origin and evolution of life, and the development of civilization, on a previously barren planet violate the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics? It is hard to imagine anything that more obviously and spectacularly violates the underlying principle behind the second law than the idea that four fundamental, unintelligent, forces of physics alone could rearrange the fundamental particles of physics into computers, science texts, nuclear power plants, and smart phones. 

MY COMMENT: Granville is just repeating here the same old, same old ill-defined stuff I've already criticized him for. The underlying principle of the second law of thermodynamics is the maximization of entropy within physical constraints. Entropy is defined in terms of the statistical weight of macrostate. As such the second law does not imply a trend toward absolute randomness. Therefore when we think of the process of crystallization we realise that entropy maximisation does not entail the absence of highly improbable configurations....... OK, that's no proof of evolution, or course, but as we will see the crystallization process shows that Granville's first principles are far too ill-defined.

No one is suggesting that the four fundamental forces of physics directly created computers, science texts, nuclear power plants and smart phones - they were created by those non-transcendent in-house intelligent agents we call human beings. This is an attempt by Granville at an reductio ad absurdum argument as he tries to stretch evolutionary credulity to breaking point. But rather than manipulating an instinctual incredulousness the question Granville should be asking is this: Could the four Divinely ordained fundamental forces of physics alone rearrange fundamental particles so as to generate carbon based life according to the establishment view of evolutionary mechanisms? Now that is not only the relevant question, but a very interesting one.

Notice also that Granville, like a good NAID, has slipped in the word "unintelligent" when he refers to the natural (God ordained) forces of physics. But I'm getting weary of telling Granville that according to Christian theism those "natural forces" were created by the genius of an Omnigod and therefore who dare call them unintelligent? Who knows; those laws, which have been contrived by an Omnigod, just might give us an evolutionary account of natural history especially given the magic numbers of the fine tuning constants whose decimal places could go on for a long, long stretch carrying large amounts of information. 

For me personally the upshot of all this is that I needn't at this stage put all my theoretical eggs in one basket either evolutionary or anti-evolutionary.  Trouble is, the instinctual need to identify which side one is on in the establishment vs right-wing tribal battles, prevents people from keeping two things in their heads at once. My advice is to stay well clear of the tribal culture war in the US and especially the MAGArite attempt to co-opt and corrupt Christianity. Regarding the latter MAGArism has, unfortunately. in part had some success as has the mafia boss who has dismantled Russian democracy.

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GRANVILLE: The most common reply to this observation is that all current statements of the second law apply only to isolated systems, for example, “In an isolated system, the direction of spontaneous change is from an arrangement of lesser probability to an arrangement of greater probability” and “In an isolated system, the direction of spontaneous change is from order to disorder.”

MY COMMENT: Well, Granville old son, you could have stopped right there at isolated systems because we know that even isolated systems can develop at least temporary pockets of high order as we see in crystallization even though entropy as properly defined is increasing. And once again, that's no strong evidence of the much more elaborate high order of organisms but it's going to tax Granville's ill defined more general statement of the second law. 

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GRANVILLE: Although the second law is really all about probability, many people try to avoid that issue by saying that evolution does not technically violate the above statements of the second law because the Earth receives energy from the sun, so it is not an isolated system. But in the above-referenced BIO-Complexity article and again in a 2017 Physics Essays article I pointed out that the basic principle underlying the second law does apply to open systems; you just have to take into account what is crossing the boundary of an open system in deciding what is extremely improbable and what is not. In both I generalized the second statement cited above to:

"If an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is isolated, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely improbable."

MY COMMENT: For the umpteenth time the second law is not all about probability; it is also, crucially, about the constraint of physical law which impose a probabilistic envelopes on what can happen; as such the second law is therefore about conditional probabilities. Also, entropy, which is defined in terms of statistical weight is not identical to randomness. Granville is simply not making this clear. Moreover, Granville has not made clear the distinction between unconditional and conditional probabilities and this is muddying the waters of his argument. Also for a Christian theist (such as myself) those conditions have been created by an Omnigod of huge intellectual resources; this is not acknowledged by Granville. Granville's argument is based on gut feelings, hand waving and tribal prejudice.

Let's be clear: Under the right temperature and pressure crystals form in an isolated system and this may involve those crystals expelling heat and sometimes absorbing heat (heat going uphill!): it all depends on which macrostate has the highest entropy, where "entropy" is a monotonically increasing function of the statistical weight of a macrostate. Because of those extraordinary Divinely inspired laws of physics the macrostate with the highest statistical weight could conceivably have large pockets of high order - as we see in the process of crystallisation. Once again to suppress a NAID knee jerk response here, I do not therefore automatically conclude that evolution must be possible. 

What I'm saying is that Granville's case is far too muddy to prove anything. When Granville tells us that an increase in order is extremely improbable....

1. He doesn't qualify it by telling us about what kind of order.

2. He is unclear about conditional probabilities 

3. He does not define entropy

4. He does not acknowledge the possible implications of the wildcard of an Omnigod creator.

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GRANVILLE: Then in Physics Essays I illustrated this tautology by showing that the entropy associated with any diffusing component X (if X is diffusing heat, this is just thermal entropy) can decrease in an open system, but no faster than it is exported through the boundary. Since this “X-entropy” measures disorder in the distribution of X, we can say that the “X-order” (defined as the negative of X-entropy) can increase in an open system, but no faster than X-order is imported through the boundary.

MY COMMENT: No problems with that. Granville then goes on to define X-entropy in terms of any diffusing quantity which could be matter, or heat or anything else that diffuses.......

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GRANVILLE:  In this analysis the rate of change of thermal entropy (S) was defined as usual by:

where Q is heat energy and T is absolute temperature, and the rate of change of X-entropy (S_x) was defined similarly by:

where C is the density (concentration) of X. In these calculations (which, remember, are just illustrating a tautology) I again assumed that nothing was going on but diffusion and heat conduction (diffusion of heat). I had first published this analysis in my reply “Can ANYTHING Happen in an Open System?” to critics of my Mathematical Intelligencer article and again in an appendix of a 2005 John Wiley text, The Numerical Solution of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations⁹and again in Biological Information: New Perspectives.

MY COMMENT: And again, no problems with that; but note the emphasis on diffusion - I'll be coming back to that in part III 

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GRANVILLE: Everyone agrees that, in an isolated system, natural forces will never reorganize scrap metal into digital computers, because this is extremely improbable. If the system is open, it is still extremely improbable that computers will appear, unless something is entering the system from outside which makes the appearance of computers not extremely improbable. For example, computers.

MY COMMENT: Here we go again.... Yes everyone (I think) does agree, but the question isn't about the probability of human technology popping up out of the blue in a junk yard; rather it is about the conditional probability of accepted evolutionary mechanisms giving rise to life as we know it; perhaps even a few self replicating cells. Granville keeps trying stretch our intuitions  about the credibility of standard evolutionary theory by making comparison with the spontaneous appearance of junk yard computers. But are the two comparable? Biological evolution has at least a few evidential pointers that hint at common descent which in  turn lends a measure of plausibility to evolutionary thought, but junkyard evolution does not have any known evidentially prompting pointers. Granville is clearly hand waving here and relying on gut feelings.

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GRANVILLE: Application to Our Open System Now let’s consider just one of many events that have occurred on Earth (and only here, it appears) that seem to be extremely improbable: “From a lifeless planet, there arose spaceships capable of flying to its moon and back safely.” This is certainly macroscopically describable, but is it extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view? You can argue that it only seems extremely improbable, but it really isn’t. 

MY COMMENT: Granville is at it yet again;  that is, distracting us from the real issue in hand by jumping to spaceships and computers. But the question in hand is this: What is the conditional probability of evolution given that an Omnigod has created physical conditions that evolutionists claim have given us and evolved natural history. Granville might as well be asking us if it is plausible that there are fairies at the bottom of our gardens; well no that isn't plausible because fairies at the bottom of the garden has no evidential prompts that get us thinking about fairies. Do complex highly organised machines appear in a junk yard? Once again there are no evidential pointers to merit a hypothesis/test cycle of investigation What about evolutionary mechanisms as currently postulated? Well at least we have some evidential prompts here to spur a hypothesis/test cycle. As such evolutionary mechanisms have some plausibility.  But how much?

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In the next section we find Granville at last grappling with the real question in hand. Viz: Are the proposed mechanisms claimed to drive biological evolution evidential and/or credible? In particular can we at least realistically expect replicators to arise given the earthly chemistry created by an Omnigod? The question is not whether computers appear spontaneously in junk yards, or bird's-nests appear out of nowhere in a wood or beaver dams are pieced together by a running stream; the unconditional probability of such structures is all but nil, but they have a much higher conditional probability given the existence of humans, birds and beavers. Likewise the unconditional probability of even the simplest biological replicator is all but nil. But given that the laws of physics and their constants have been created by and Omnigod the 64 trillion dollar question is: What is he conditional probability of evolution as it is currently tendered by the academic community?

Before I finish let's remind ourselves of what I believe to be at the bottom of the polarisation between the evolutionary academic status quo and those of a NAID persuasion: I submit that there is a feeling abroad, (whether instinctual or cultural, it's not a feeling I have) that should the completeness of physics and chemistry be adequately abducted this would obviate the need for a creator (*1). Such thoughts have their roots in deism and such thoughts lead to the "blind natural forces vs intelligent agency" dichotomy of the NAID community. At the risk of being labelled "Woke" or "Leftist" I whole heartedly reject the NAID's God-of-the-gaps philosophy. But the battle lines are now entrenched and the stream of much Western thought has found its course and it has incised & fixed its meandering flow into the rocks of tribal prejudice. 

                                                        To be continued......

 FOOTNOTES

*1 Something that I need to make clear is this: There are two types of completeness that the laws of physics may possess. Firstly, there is descriptive completeness; this means that the physical laws are sufficient to describe all that happens in space-time, although they are contingent and have no logical completeness. Descriptive completeness leaves us with what I call Physic's Irreducible Logical Barrier. In contrast, if the Laws of Physics have logical completeness it means that not only do these laws have descriptive completeness but also that they emerge from deeper principles which are logically true and therefore the laws of physics can't be anything other than what they are without entailing a logical contradiction.  Given the current state of our knowledge it is not clear whether the laws of physics have descriptive completeness or the much stronger logical completeness.

The existence of some kind of logical truism underlying the cosmos came up in my Carry on Carriering series, but there was no commitment in that series as to whether the deeper logical truism was a sentient God or insentient principles; on that subject personal intuitions rule. I know what my intuitions tell me on that score.