Bill Dembski's Information Conservation Thesis Falls Over

NAID's Stephen Meyer interviewed by Unwoke Right Wing Republican Dan Crenshaw. 
Evidence that NAID has become part of the  politicized culture war

I see that William "Bill" Dembski has done a post on Evolution News on the subject of the "Conservation of Information". The article is for the most part an interesting history of that phrase and goes to show that "information" has a number of meanings dependent on the discipline where it is being used, with Bill Dembski having his own proprietary concerns tied up with his support of the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) community.  See here for the article:

Conservation of Information: History of an Idea | Evolution News

Bill's particular information interest seems to lie with the so called "No Free Lunch Theorems". These theorems were about the mathematical limits on computer algorithms purposed to search for (and/or generate) configurations with properties of particular interest. Bill's focus on the "No Free Lunch Theorems" is bound up with the NAID community's challenge to standard evolution, a process which they see as a threat to their self-inflicted XOR creation dichotomy; viz: either "God Intelligence did it" XOR "Blind unguided natural forces did it" . 

But Bill gets full marks for spotting the relevance of these theorems to evolutionary theory: Evolution does have at least some features isomorphic with computer searches; in particular these theorems do throw some light on evolution's "search", reject and select mechanism which locks in organic configurations. So, the least I can say is that Bill's interest in the "No free lunch theorems" is based on what looks to be a potentially fruitful avenue of study. However, although it is true that the "No free lunch theorems" reveal interesting mathematical limits on computer searches, as we will see Bill has gone too far in trying co-opt these theorems for his concept of information conservation; in fact, to the contrary I would say that these theorems prove that Bill is wrong about the conservation of information.

                                                                                             ***

We can get a gut feeling for the No free lunch theorems with the impressionistic & informal mathematical analysis in this post. 

(Note: I arrived at similar conclusions in these two essays...

GeneratingComplexity2c.pdf - Google Drive

CreatingInformation.pdf - Google Drive 

These essays are more formal and cover the subject in more detail)

***

We imagine that we have a set of computer programs executing in parallel with the intention of finding out if at some point in their computations they generate examples of a particular class of configuration. These configurations are to be found somewhere in an absolutely huge domain of possible configurations that I shall call D and which numbers D members, where D is extremely large.  It is a well known fact that most of the members of D will likely be highly disordered. 

A computer "search" starts with its initial algorithmic information  usually coded in the form of a character string or configuration S of length S. This configurational string contains the information informing the computing machinery how to generate a sequence of configurations C1, C2,.....,C_n,.... etc. The software creates this sequence by modifying the current configuration C_n in order to create the next configuration C_n+1. A crucial operational characteristic of algorithms is that they are capable of making if-then-else type decisions which means that the modifications leading to C_n+1 will be dependent on configurational features found in C_n. It is this decisional feature of executed algorithms which gives them their search, reject and select character, not unlike evolution. This means that their trajectory through configuration space is often very difficult to predict without actually executing the algorithm. This is because the conditional decision-making of algorithms means that we can't predict what direction an algorithm will take at any one point in the computation until the conditions it is responding to have actually been generated by the algorithm. The concept of computational irreducibility is relevant here. 

In his article Bill is careful to describe the components of search algorithms, components which give them their search, reject & select character. But for my purposes we can simplify things by ignoring these components and only give cognizance to the fact that an algorithm takes its computer along what is possibly a non-linear trajectory in configuration space. We can also drop Bill's talk of the algorithm aiming for a specified target and then stopping since in general an algorithm can go on indefinitely moving through configuration space endlessly generating configurations as does conventional evolution. All we need to be concerned about here is the potentiality for algorithms to generate a class of configs of interest in a  "time" T where T is measured in algorithmic steps. 

                                                ***

If we have an algorithm with a string length of S then the maximum number of possible algorithms that can be constructed given this string length is A^s where A is the number of characters in the character set used to write the algorithm.

We now imagine that we have these possible A^s algorithms all executing in parallel for T steps. It then follows that the maximum number of configurations C which potentially can be generated by these possible algorithms of length S will be no greater than the limits set by the following relationship....

C <= A^s X  T

 Relation 1.0

...where C is the number of configurations that can be created in time T if the set of algorithms are run in parallel and assuming that a) T is measured in algorithmic steps and that b) the computing machinery is only capable of one step at a time and generates one configuration per step per algorithm.  

If the class of configurations we are interested in exist somewhere in a huge domain D consisting of D configurations and where for practically realistic execution times T:

                                     D >>> C

Relation 2.0

...then the relatively meager number of configurations our algorithm set can generate in realistic times like T are a drop in the ocean when compared to the size of the set of configurational possibilities that comprise D.  If relationship 2.0 holds then it is clear that given realistic times T, our "searches" will be unable to access the vast majority of configurations in D. 

With the above relationships in mind no free lunch starts to make some sense: If we are looking for algorithms which generate members of a particular class of configuration of interest (e.g. organic-like configurations) then for the algorithmic search to have a chance of succeeding in a reasonable time we require one of the following two conditions to be true...

1. Assuming that such exists then an algorithm of reasonable length S has to be found which is able to generate the targeted class of configurations within a reasonable time T.  However, if relationship 2.0 holds then it is clear that this option will not work for the vast majority of configurations in D.

2.  The alternative is that we invalidate relationship 2.0 by either a) allowing the algorithms of length S to be large enough so that A^s ~ D, or b) allowing the execution time T of these algorithms to be sufficiently large so that T ~ D,  or c) allowing that T and A^s when combined invalidate relationship  2.0. 

***

So, with the foregoing in mind we can see that if an algorithm is to generate a stipulated class of solution in domain D in a reasonable time T it either a) has to be logically possible to code the algorithmic solution in a starting string S of reasonable length S or b) we have to code the required information into a long string S of length S such that A^s ~ D. 

In case a) both S and T are of a practically reasonable magnitude from which it follows that given relationship 1.0 then little of the domain D  can be generated by such algorithms and therefore the majority of configurations that could possibly be designated as of interest in D (especially if they are complex disordered configurations) can not be found by these case-a algorithms. In case b) the starting string S, in terms of the number of possible algorithms that can be constructed, is commensurate with the size of D and therefore could possibly generate configurations of stipulated interest in a reasonable time. 

Therefore it follows that if we are restricted to relatively short algorithm strings of length S then these algorithms will only have a chance of reaching the overwhelming majority of configurations in D after very long execution times. If our configurations of designated interest are in this long execution time region in D these configurations will demand large values of T to generate. Long execution time algorithms, absent of any helpful starting strings which provide "short cut" information are I think what Bill calls "blind search algorithms". That emphasis on the word "blind" is a loaded misnomer which appeals to the NAID community for reasons which I hope will become clear. 

***

For Bill this what no free lunch means to him...

Because no-free-lunch theorems assert that average performance of certain classes of search algorithms remain constant at the level of blind search, these theorems have very much a conservation of information feel in the sense that conservation is strictly maintained and not merely that conservation is the best that can be achieved, with loss of conservation also a possibility

It's true that unless primed with the right initial information by far and away the majority of algorithms will reach most targets of an arbitrarily designated interest only after very long execution times involving laborious searching.....ergo, upfront information that lengthens S is needed to shorten the search; in fact this is always true by definition if we are wanting to generate configurations of interest that are also random configurations. 

So, the following is my interpretation of what Bill means by the conservation of information; namely, that to get the stipulated class of garbage out in reasonable time you have to put the right garbage in from the outset. The "garbage in" is a starting string S of sufficient length to tip the algorithm off as to where to look. The alternative is to go for searches with very long execution times T. So, paraphrasing Bill, we might say that his conservation of information can be expressed by this caricatured equation:

G_in = G_out

Relation 3.0

....where G_in represents some kind of informational measure of the "garbage" going in and G_out is the informational measure of the garbage coming out of the computation. But the following is the crucial point which as we will see invalidates Bill's conservation of information: Although relationship 3.0 gives Bill his conservation of information feel, it is an approximation which only applies to reasonable execution times.....it neglects the fact that the execution of an algorithm does create information if only slowly. That Bill has overlooked the fact that what he calls "blind searches" nevertheless slowly generate information becomes apparent from the following analysis.

***

If we take the log of relation 1.0 we get:

                                                         Log (C) <= S Log (A) + Log(T)

relation 4.0

The value C is the number of configurations that A^s algorithms will generate in time T and this will be less than or equal to the righthand side of the above relation. The probability of one these C configurations being chosen at random will be 1/C. Converting this probability to a Shannon information value, I, gives:

I = - Log (1/C) = Log (C)

relation 5.0

Therefore substituting I into 4.0 gives:

I <= S Log (A) + Log(T)

relation 6.0

Incorporating Log (A) into a generalized measure of string length, S gives....

I <= S + Log(T)

relation 7.0

From this relationship we can see that parallel algorithms do have the potential to generate Shannon Information with time T, and the information is not just incorporated from the outset in a string of length S. However, we do notice that because the information generated by execution time is the log function of T, that information is generated very slowly. This is what Bill has overlooked: What he derisively refers to as a "blind search" (sic) actually has the potential to generate information, if slowly. Bill's view is expressed further in the following quote from his article (With my emphases and with my insertions in red).....

With the no-free-lunch theorems, something is clearly being conserved [No, wrong] in that performance of different search algorithms, when averaged across the range of feedback information, is constant and equivalent to performance of blind search.[Log(T) is the "blind search" component] The question then arises how no free lunch relates to the consistent claim in the earlier conservation-of-information literature about output information not exceeding input information. In fact, the connection is straightforward. The only reason to average performance of algorithms across feedback information is if we don’t have any domain-specific information to help us find the target in question.[The "domain-specific" information is implicit in the string S of length S in relation 7.0] 

Consequently, no free lunch tells us that without such domain-specific information, we have no special input information to improve the search, and thus no way to achieve output information that exceeds the capacities of blind search. When it comes to search, blind search is always the lowest common denominator — any search under consideration must always be able to do at least as good as blind search because we can always execute a blind search.[Oh no we can't Bill, at least not practically quickly enough under the current technology; we still await the technological sophistication to implement the expanding parallelism needed for "blind search" to be effective, the holy grail of computing. "Blind search" is a much more sophisticated idea than our Bill and his NAID mates are making out!] With no free lunch, it is blind search as input and blind search as output. The averaging of feedback information treated as input acts as a leveler, ensuring parity between information input and output. No free lunch preserves strict conservation [Tough, not true!] precisely because it sets the bar so low at blind search.

By distilling its findings into a single fundamental relation of probability theory, this work provides a definitive, fully developed, general formulation of the Law of Conservation of Information, showing that information that facilitates search cannot magically materialize out of nothing but instead must be derived from pre-existing sources.[False; information derives not just from S, but can also creep in from an algorithm's  execution time T ]

Blind search, blind search, blind search, blind, blind, blind,...... the repeated mantra of NAID culture which with its subliminal gnosto-dualism repeatedly refers to the resources of God's creation as a place of "blind natural forces". Sometimes you will also hear them talk about "unguided natural forces". But in one sense I would maintain the cosmos is far from "natural", and this is evidenced by the  sense of wonder its highly contingent form engenders among theists and atheists alike, all of whom can advance no logically obliging reason as to its highly organised configuration (accept perhaps Richard Carrier whose arrogance on this score would do Zaphod Beeblebrox  proud)

Bill's last sentence above is clearly false, as false can be; he's overlooked the slowly growing information term in relation 7.0. Information is not conserved during a search because the so-called "blind search" (sic) term is slowly, almost undetectably creating information. There is therefore no "strict conservation of information" (sic). That the so-called "blind search" (sic) is being understated by Bill and the NAID culture he represents becomes very apparent as soon as we realize that equation 7.0 has been derived on the assumption that we are using parallel processing; that is, a processing paradigm where the number of processors doing the computation is constant. But if we start thinking about the exponentials of a process which utilizes expanding parallelism the second term on the righthand side of 7.0 has the potential to become linear in T and therefore highly significant. This is why so much effort and cash is being put into quantum computing; Quantum computers clearly create information at a much more rapid rate and it is the monumental resources being invested in this line of cutting edge research which gives the lie to Bill's contention that information is conserved during computation and that somehow "blind search" rates as a primitive last resort. 

                                                                       ***

As far as the big evolution question is concerned I regard this matter with studied detachment. God as the sovereign author of the cosmic story could introduce information into the cosmic configuration generator using either or both terms in relation 7.0; in particular if unlike primitive humanity at our current technological juncture God has at his finger tips the power of expanding parallelism to crack the so called blind search problem the second term on the righthand side of 7.0 has the potential to become significant. Accordingly, I reject NAID's wrongly identified "blind natural forces" category when those forces are in fact highly sophisticated because they are in the hands of Omniscient Omnipotence. The trouble is that the NAID community have heavily invested in an anti-evolution culture and it looks like they've past the point of no return, such is their huge social and tribal identification with anti-evolutionism. Ironically, even if bog-standard evolution is true (along with features like junk DNA) we are still faced with the Intelligent Design question. As for myself I have no indispensable intellectual investment in either the evolutionist or anti-evolutionist positions.

                                                    ***

As I have remarked so many times before, what motivates NAID (& YEC) culture's aversion to the idea that information can be created by so-called "blind natural forces" is this culture's a priori anti-evolution stance. Underlying this stance, I propose, is a subliminal gnosto-dualist mindset, and this mindset in this subliminal form afflicts Western societies across the board, from atheism to authoritarian & touchy feely expressions of Christianity; in fact Western religious expression in general. But that's another story. (See for example my series on atheist Don Cupitt - a series yet to be completed)

What's compounded my problem with NAID & YEC nowadays is their embrace of unwoke political culture, a culture which automatically puts them at odds with the academic establishment. I'll grant that that establishment and its supporters have often (or at least sometimes) subjected outsiders (like Bill for example) to verbal abuse and cancellation (e.g. consider Richard Dawkins & the Four Horseman, RationalWiki etc.). This has help urge them to find friends among the North American far-right academia hating tribes and embrace some of their political attitudes (See here). As I personally by and large support academia (but see here) it is therefore likely that I too would be lumped together by the NAID & YEC communities as a "woke" sympathizer, even though I reject any idea that the problems of society can be finally fixed by social engineering initiated centrally, least of all by Marxist social engineering. But then I'm also a strong objector to far-right libertarian social engineering which seeks a society regulated purely by a community's use of their purses (and then be pray to the chaotic non-linearities of market economics and power grabbing by plutocratic crony capitalists). In today's panicked and polarized milieu the far-right would see even a constitutional Royalist like myself who is also in favour of a regulated market economy, as at best a diluted "socialist" and at worst a far-left extremist, ripe for the woke-sin-bin!

NOTE: An article on "Conservation of Information" has recently popped up on Panda's Thumb. See here: Conservation of arguments

NAID pundits Hedin and Sewell rightly criticized

Acknowledgement: I think this picture comes from the Faraday Institute, 

a Christain organization of scientists. It sums up well the NAID 

 community's dogmatic and entrenched (and politicized) version of 

Intelligent Design

In a post on Panda's Thumb Evomathematician Joe Felsenstein justifiably criticizes North American Intelligent Design (NAID) pundits Eric Hedin and Granville Sewell for the weakness of their anti-evolution arguments. See Felsenstein's article here: Eric Hedin, meet Granville Sewell

I have critiqued the work of both Sewell and Hedin myself. Below are links to some of the articles I've written.

ON HEDIN

Quantum Non-Linearity: NAID pundit William Dembski on AI

Quantum Non-Linearity: North American Intelligent Design's response to my 27 June & 2 July posts. Part 2

Quantum Non-Linearity: North American Intelligent Design's response to my last two posts. Part 1

ON SEWELL

Quantum Non-Linearity: Make it IDist proof and along comes a better IDist

Quantum Non-Linearity: Caution! You are about to enter Intelligent Design's false dichotomy zone!

Quantum Non-Linearity: Western Dualism in the North American Intelligent Design Community. Part 2

Quantum Non-Linearity: IDISTS

Quantum Non-Linearity: Once More into the False Dichotomy Zone: "Naturalism vs. Design".

Quantum Non-Linearity: Evolution and Computation

Quantum Non-Linearity: Granville Sewell; Still Getting it Wrong.

Quantum Non-Linearity: Thermodynamics and Evolution – Again.

And while I'm here: I have also critiqued IDists Nametti and Holloway for their halfcocked notion of "Algorithmic Specified Complexty".  See here:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Breaking Through the Information Barrier in Natural History Part 5

And again, while I'm here it's unfair to miss out Casey Luskin:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Naive Intelligent Design: Part III

***

Felsenstein presents two examples of the kind of hand waving arguments we get from these two NAID pundits. About Hedin's hand waving Felsenstein writes: 

Eric Hedin’s argument [against evolution] boils down to simple incredulity, without any logical proof of a barrier to evolution by ordinary evolutionary processes.

In my opinion that sums up much of the anti-evolution polemic one gets from the NAID tribe as a whole. But although one can criticize NAID thinking at a technical level (as does Felsenstein) it is also possible to criticize them from the very theistic basis which we know motivates most NAID endeavors; that is, NAID logic has internal incoherence. As a Christian myself this approach interests me (But of course one can't expect an atheist like Joe Felsenstein to respect a theistic approach).

As I've repeated so many times in this blog the NAID community as a whole are intoxicated by a blind natural forces versus intelligent design dichotomy. The irony is that the concept of Intelligent Design itself actually undermines the NAID community's dualistic dichotomy: For if one posits a creator God (as I do) then the very concept of blind natural forces becomes problematic; if an Omniscient, Omnipotent God has created those highly contingent and very special "natural forces" with the foresight of omniscience they can hardly be usefully labeled as blind and natural. See the following link where I suggest it is at least arguable that even standard evolution (if, repeat if, it has occurred) is not only highly unnatural but in fact constitutes creation with a vengeance....

Quantum Non-Linearity: NAID Part IV: Evolution: Creation on Steriods

See also the link below for Christian biologist Denis Alexander's comments which are in effect critical of NAID....

Quantum Non-Linearity: Denis Alexander: "I would suggest dropping the term 'methodological naturalism'"

Just as the NAID folk have irreversibly committed themselves (unnecessarily) to an outright anti-evolutionism they have similarly committed themselves (unnecessarily) to an outright and dogmatic anti-Junk DNA position. Again, ID itself undermines NAID's absolute certainty of this position: For even if we allow that life entailed an Omniscient, Omnipotent God directly tinkering with DNA during its long natural history we know so little about the methods and motives of that inscrutable intelligence that it is quite possible that like a human programmer this entity, for whatever mysterious reason, decided to leave or even insert dormant and redundant code in the DNA. None of this is to say that junk DNA exists (or doesn't exist), but the absence of junk DNA isn't a necessary implication of ID. 

I've come to the opinion that NAID thinking has less to do with a dispassionate intellectual position than it does the taking up of a variety of polemical postures which have more to do with tribal political badging (and badgering) than the studied detachment of heroic investigative thinking: See my article here: Quantum Non-Linearity: NAID Part V: Politics and North American Intelligent Design. Linked to their political branding are politically contrarian and anti-academic-establishment notions connected with climate change, vaccines, masks, gun law, sex & gender and paranoia about a large deep state and regulation of capitalist excesses (*1). One also has to throw into the mix young earthism, flat earthism and even conspiracy theorism and Trumpism, all of which are tribal subdivisions within the broad church of what is essentially an anti-establishment popularist movement. 

The arrogant atheism of someone like Richard Carrier is fueling the politically polarizing fires with his own very flawed version of "natural forces". Carrier simply doesn't understand probability and randomness which to his mind can be (ab)used as the ultimate logical truisms, the ultimate insentient creative "natural force". For him probability is at the heart of an atheist mythology about the aseity of a creative source which stands in as a kind of god-dynamic. Interestingly Sea of Faith theologian (and atheist!) Don Cupitt also gets carried away with the subliminal but spurious & curious assumption that the "mechanical universe" entails a self-sustaining efficacy; see here: Quantum Non-Linearity: The Sea of Faith and Don Cupitt. Part I.

For more on the popularist vs establishment polarization see here: Views, News and Pews: Religious Popularism vs Academia).

Finally let me make this clear: Along with Christian physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne I can claim to be an intelligent design creationist, but I reject the NAID community's entrenched, dogmatic and highly politicized popularist version of ID. In the early days of this blog I was sympathetic, but no longer. 

ADDENDUM 19/12

I was interested to read this quick report by David Klinghoffer on a NAID conference at the prestigious wood-paneled Cambridge University (UK)...

“Doesn’t the Fossil Record Prove Darwin Right?” | Evolution News

He raises well known challenges to standard evolutionary theory (e.g. The fossil record doesn't appear to provide strong evidence of that necessary implication of standard evolution, namely evolutionary gradualism). It's no skin off my nose if the current proposed mechanisms of evolution are false since I haven't put down big stakes (either way) in bog-standard evolutionary mechanisms.

But of course, NAID has huge stakes in anti-evolutionism (They have also put down big political stakes). With its intoxicating "natural forces vs evolution" dichotomy it has inextricably tied their version of ID to an anti-evolutionary position (*2). This of course means that should a successful development mechanism of natural history gain sufficient evidence their dichotomy would imply that ID is false and atheist Richard Dawkins who is enamored of the same dichotomy wins!

Klinghoffer betrays his intoxication with the NAID dichotomy when at the end of an otherwise agreeable post writes of the discontinuities in the fossil record.....

Such explosions of creativity are just what you’d predict from the activity of a designing mind, a source of biological information outside nature that has shaped the long history of life.

Sorry David that's not a necessary prediction of ID. As I've said so often, even bog-standard evolution requires careful design. But like Richard Dawkins NAID is having none of it: According to NAID, if evolution has occurred then we must all become atheists like our Richard!

Footnotes:

*1. Anger at private health insurers: Fuel for Marxist agitators!

The dark fandom behind CEO murder suspect Luigi Mangione - BBC News

*2 I'm of the opinion that NAID has driven its stakes so deeply because they are now part of an anti-establishment popularist political trend with Trump-world as the chief bellwether.

INTERESTING LINKS

1. May be not!

 A scientist may have just proven that we all live inside a computer simulation

2. Put science into the hands of market entrepreneurs?

Scientists as scoundrels

Far right Libertarianism.....

Milei has not minced words about his feelings towards scientists. Rather than having their research subsidized by the government, he said during a forum in September, “I invite them to go out into the market. Investigate, publish and see if people are interested or not, instead of hiding like scoundrels behind the coercive force of the state”.

The Compulsion of Conspiracy Theorism

 (This post also appeared on my Views, News and Pews blog, but to complete the collection on Quantum Non-Linearity I add it here as well)

                                        

I have recently compiled this analysis of an article by end-times pundit Wilfred Hahn. Below I've copied in the introduction to my analysis. 

1.     Introduction

      This document is best read in conjunction with my document here where I explore some of the pratfalls of conspiracy theorism. 

Conspiracy theorism is a pernicious evil that wracks democratic society; it undermines confidence and plays into the hands of tricksters and would-be-dictators who are looking for the disillusioned, the angry, the disaffected, the traumatised and the paranoid as an easy-sell for their concocted rumours of conspiracy & blame in order to justify a power grab. The cut & thrust and the open contensions natural to an accountable democracy exacerbates the insecurity of those targeted by would-be-despots who perceive democratic debate and its rancour as a sign of weakness and failure.

Of course, in societies where dictatorship has been successfully installed (e.g. Putin’s Russia) there is sufficient autocratic media control to block all conspiracies theories but the one put out by the protection racketeers in charge. In totalitarian and authoritarian states government may be headed by a demagogue figure who is portrayed as the only truth teller.

In this document I look at a web article by Christian end-times pundit Wilfred Hahn.  He consciously avoids fanciful conspiracy theories peddled by web enabled theorists. These theorists join the dots of social history into ramifying plots hatched by hidden nefarious operators who are said to be the evil geniuses behind current affairs. Hahn’s overall thesis is that an integrated economic system facilitated by enhanced technology, social integration and a world market makes the idea of international centralized social control by an anti-Christ an all too plausible scenario. I would not disagree with this conclusion.

But as we shall see, although Hahn identifies no specific baroque conspiracy behind current affairs he nevertheless informs us that the history of progress is a product of a conspiracy intended to bring about an anti-Christ power grab. He therefore inadvertently plays into the hand of conspiracy theorists by leaving the edges of the map blank and making statements to the effect that “Here be Monsters”. Therefore the active imaginations of the disillusioned, the angry, the disaffected, the traumatised and the paranoid are encouraged to fill in those spaces with fanciful entities which explain and make sense of their fears and anger: Such will take their eyes off up & coming world-dictators and instead they will focus on the fanciful intrigue imagined to be going on behind the scenes. All this will play into the hands of an antichrist.

It’s with reluctance that I relate my anticipation that many Christians are well set up to be duped by up-and-coming dictators who use conspiracy theories to exploit Christian diffidence about the democratic West where freedom of expression & choice is a prime moral value.  It is ironic that reformation Christianity opened the way to a sequence of events that ultimately gave Western populations the choice to accept or reject the core message of Christianity. This very freedom of choice was built into Christianity along with many other aspects of the democratic West where the concept that community serves the individual (and vice versa) along with the freedom to dissent still has a very strong hold on Western minds. The irony was that Christ’s take-it-or-leave-it presentation of Himself turned out to contain the seeds of the possible demise of core Christianity in the West.

As a reaction against the marginalisation and decay of core Christianity in the West it seems that some Christians consequently find common ground with potential dictators and will support a dictators cause as the price for the restoration of their traditional authoritarian view of society. (e.g Hitler, Trump and Putin). In any case many of those Christians come from sects with a culture that has a high view of demagogic leadership and may even seek to bring about a Christian social authoritarianism bordering on dominionism.  My guess is that Christianity will become debatable ground during the end times; by that I mean demagogues will claim to be working for Christianity.

Epistemology, Ontology, Creation and Salvation

A fundamentalist and young earth creationist goes over the top in more than one sense.

But I was ready for him.

I recently finished compiling a reply to a Christian fundamentalist who sent me a 13 page document criticising my stand against young earthism. Let me say straight away that it was nice of him to spend so much time trying put me back on the straight and narrow. He meant well although it is true that he is probably a bit of a curmudgeon and being a fundamentalist was, from the outset, suspicious of my motives for believing what I do. But I couldn't let it go. So I took my spiritual life into my hands and over the course of no less than two years I slowly dissembled his arguments and added another 80 odd pages to those 13 pages. On sending him the first draft the outcome however was inevitable; he was after all a fundamentalist: My name was mud! Below are a couple of extracts from the preface to my book length reply:

***

The format of this book has been styled as a reply to the contents of a 13 page document compiled and sent to me by a Christian fundamentalist & Young Earth Creationist. I shall call him Joe Smith. That 13 page document was in turn a response to a short PDF I sent him. It was very nice of Joe to reply at length to my initial PDF. But having lured him to go over the top only to have me use his arguments, like WWI troops, as target practice for my machine gun, it all smacked of dirty tricks to Joe’s suspicious fundamentalist mind and he accused me of sucker punching him. 

***

I will leave the real name & identity of Joe Smith as an enigma; although the original Smith arose out of a real correspondence that now may or may not be the case: I may or may not have concocted him from bits of Christian fundamentalist reality for the sake of illustration and for the purpose of bringing to the foreground the salient points I wish to make. Just how real or unreal this person is, need not come into it. Joe Smith is an abstraction, perhaps even another Simplico after all. But as an abstraction he has given me the opportunity to showcase in this book important technical matters whose implications go far beyond a singular debate with this or that fundamentalist: Namely:

1.      Epistemic distance & epistemic amenability.

2.    That the fundamentalist sound-bite that there is a difference between historical science and observational science is an incoherent & scientifically harmful notion.

3.      Time irreversibility and messaging.

4.      The signalling cosmos and creative integrity.

5.      The difference between historical (H) vs. algorithmic (A) descriptions and their respective epistemic distances.

6.      The interdependence of H and A.

7.      The nature of standard evolution.

8.      Interpreting the Bible.

9.      The right way to read Genesis 1.

The primary focus of this book is actually epistemological and about just how far short many fundamentalists (and secondarily some atheists) fall in their understanding of epistemology.

Timothy V Reeves, June 2021

ADDENDUM 14/07/21

Sympathy with Ken Ham!

That the fundamentalist tendency to use a polarised puritanical polemic to depict social reality is too simplistic becomes apparent when even someone like myself can sympathetically align with fundamentalists on certain issues (as ought to be clear from my book). Take this example from Ken Ham's blog: Viz: 

https://answersingenesis.org/racism/scientific-american-publishes-error-filled-hit-piece/

It's titled Scientific American Publishes Error-Filled Hit Piece, Claiming Genesis Is Racist. The piece Ken is talking about was written by Alison Hopper who according to Ken is a film maker. Ken's post includes part of the following quote from the offending Scientific American article, an article sensationally titled Denial of Evolution is a Form of White Supremacy Viz: 

At the heart of white evangelical creationism is the mythology of an unbroken white lineage that stretches back to a light-skinned Adam and Eve. In literal interpretations of the Christian Bible, white skin was created in God's image. Dark skin has a different, more problematic origin. As the biblical story goes, the curse or mark of Cain for killing his brother was a darkening of his descendants' skin. Historically, many congregations in the U.S. pointed to this story of Cain as evidence that Black skin was created as a punishment.

The fantasy of a continuous line of white descendants segregates white heritage from Black bodies. In the real world, this mythology translates into lethal effects on people who are Black. Fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible are part of the “fake news” epidemic that feeds the racial divide in our country.

It's likely true that East and West versions of Christianity have disproportionately portrayed Adam and Eve as white Europeans thus effectively promulgating an almost unconscious systemic racism.  Moreover, I can't speak for the whole history of fundamentalist brands who from time to time may (or may not) have identified the mark of Cain with Black skin; but I've never heard of any Christian groups who have have made this identification. Also, it is clear from Ken's article that it has never occurred to AiG to promote such a harmful notion and AiG certainly don't teach what Hopper is slanderously claiming. This is Hopper interpolating the contemporary concept of a heinous sin and putting these "modern blasphemies" into the mouths of innocents, inquisitional style. It certainly doesn't follow that denial of evolution necessarily entails racism any more than belief in evolution necessarily entails racism (as some anti-evolution Christians might try to maintain).

In any case I wonder if Hopper really understands evolution. In my book Epistemology, Ontology, Creation and Salvation I talk of the difference between evolution as natural history (H) and evolution as algorithm or mechanism (A), two very distinct meanings; one can be in a position where one believes one but not the other. Does one automatically classify as racist in Hopper's eyes if one challenges the status quo on evolution? Sounds as though Hopper believes one does, and who knows, if her ideas catch on the virtuous thought police may be knocking at your door! Authors like Hopper who are claiming to fight for the black cause are actually doing harm to that cause by caricaturing it so badly.

All in all it seems that some of the new watchers of our morals can be just as inquisitional & threatening as fundamentalists:  If they are anything like Hopper they too see the world through polarised spectacles; we are all labelled as racists if we don't believe what Hopper believes. But really there is no surprise here: The fact is these new moral guardians are flawed humanity like the rest of us and therefore tempted by the same draw to polarising extremism as are fundamentalists. The resultant effect of Hopper's false accusations will only entrench fundamentalists further into their embattled stance and confirm to them that the world of outsiders is out to get them. 

Finally it's important to note that at the end of this sensationally twisted article Scientific American adds a disclaimer.....

This is an opinion and analysis article; the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

They've made sure they've washed their hands then!

NOTE: The de facto Intelligent Design web site, Uncommon Descent, also comment on this article:

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/at-pj-media-a-response-to-religious-claims-made-in-scientific-americans-denial-of-evolution-is-white-supremacy-piece/

ADDENDUM 20/08/21

Lack of sympathy with Ken Ham!

In a post dated 19 August and entitled Do Conservatives have a “Difficult Relationship with Science”?  We find Ken peddling his usual anti-science notions about the difference between observational science and historical science (sic), a matter I address in the book linked to in this post. In Ken's post we find the usual cliché surfing that Ken is inclined to do on this subject:

But what the author is failing to recognize is the difference between observational and historical science. In other words, this author has a “difficult relationship with science” because the author doesn’t understand the word science. You see, very few people have a so-called “difficult relationship with science” when it comes to observational science. Observational science is studying what is directly testable, observable, and repeatable. It’s the kind of science that uses the scientific method and builds our technology and medical innovations. Both creationists and evolutionists agree on observational science......But this is very different from historical science. This kind of science deals with the past—which cannot be directly tested, observed, or repeated

As I show in my book this is both false & incoherent anti-science nonsense. He simply doesn't understand epistemology any more than does Joe Smith. Instead he claims others don't understand the word science because they don't take onboard his intellectual gimcrack. He can get this nonsense past his naïve supporters and that's all that matters to Answers in Genesis

Make it IDist proof and along comes a better IDist

                                 

In a Panda's Thumb post dated 5th May Evolutionary Mathematician Joe Felsenstein criticises Intelligent Design aficionado Granville Sewell for making the claim that the following problem is unsolvable: According to Sewell that problem is, how do we...

#3 Explain how life could have originated and evolved into intelligent humans, through entirely natural (unintelligent) processes.

Felsenstein quotes Sewell where Sewell explains why he thinks the foregoing problem is unsolvable (Emphases are mine):

Well, I have a very simple proof  [*GASP!*] that the biological problem #3 posed above is also impossible to solve, that does fit in the margin of this document. All one needs to do is realize that if a solution were found, we would have proved something obviously false, that a few (four, apparently) fundamental, unintelligent forces of physics alone could have rearranged the fundamental particles of physics into libraries full of science texts and encyclopedias, computers connected to monitors, keyboards, laser printers and the Internet, cars, trucks, airplanes, nuclear power plants and Apple iPhones.

Is this really a valid proof? It seems perfectly valid to me, as I cannot think of anything in all of science that can be stated with more confidence than that a few unintelligent forces of physics alone could not have rearranged the basic particles of physics into Apple iPhones.

The irony is that the chief weakness of Sewell's argument is due to potential internal inconsistency in his world view; for presumably Sewell's a Christian theist who like myself believes in a created cosmos; all of it & not just some bits that God did! That means as far as we know those so-called "unintelligent natural forces" and their constants might have been intelligently selected to ensure that the evolution of life somewhere in the universe has a high probability given the size of the cosmos. If you are a Christian you are not supposed to be a dualist who sees the "natural world" as somehow, well.... natural and therefore inferior in some way; it is after all the creation of an omniscient omnipotence. 

Now, although many respected evangelical Christians are not at all adverse to evolution in terms of the proposed mechanisms of change (e.g. Tom Wright, Francis Collins, Denis Alexander, Simon Conway-Morris, John Polkinghorne)  I myself do entertain considerable doubts about those mechanisms (But I accept the story of natural history - an important distinction there). My issue with evolution revolves around whether a structure I call the spongeam exists in configuration space (See links at end). But having said that I probably have more in common with these evangelicals than I do the de facto Intelligent Designers like Sewell who see the world through polarising filters, in this case  a natural forces vs God did it intelligent agency dichotomy. The logical outcome of this subliminally dualist world view is the kind of crass argumentation we get from Sewell which he then presents as a perfectly valid "proof". 

Given my doubts about standard evolutionary mechanisms and my I belief that Divine intelligence has acted and continues to proactively act in creation, particularly the creation of life, one might think I would find common cause with people like Sewell in spite of their dualism. But no, there is no chance of that; Politics has seen off that possibility. The de facto ID culture along along with its ugly fundamentalist sisters (Like Answers in Genesis) has gravitated toward the extreme right-wing even in some cases voicing the conspiracy theories of a "stolen" 2020 US election. Rejected by the academic establishment the de facto ID movement have fallen into the arms of right-wing "drain-the-swamp" fantasists whose liar-in-chief is Donald Trump, a man who seeks to overthrow the necessarily  argumentative, factionalism  & fractiousness of democracy with the illusion of a bucolic volk-libertarianism.*. To this far-right community the middle ground politics of Joe Biden looks like the far left! 

 

On the Spongeam

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2019/09/evolution-naked-chance.html

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-mathematics-of-spongeam.html

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2016/02/on-structuralism-and-spongeam.html

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2015/11/intelligent-designs-2001-space-odyssey.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2015/06/algorithms-searches-dualism-and_13.html

Footnote

* The wealth making and innovating energy of the market is without doubt, but unfortunately that energy sometimes thrashes uncontrollably: The non-linear instabilities of the market and its power law wealth spectrum, often perceived as unjust, are liable to fuel alienation and far left socialism.  Community identification & the highly localised "serve yourself" operation of the market often find themselves at odds. Somehow the best of the free market and the best of community values have to be reconciled - the alternative is volk-libertarianism which will  generate a counter culture of alienation and extreme socialism. See here: https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2020/07/marx-vs-smith_30.html