An Eternal Universe or an Eternal God?

Both the affirmation AND THE DENIAL
of a creation point originate from
 deep theological instincts

I was very interested in the following post by Bruce Gordon on the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) web site Science & Culture ...

 On the BGV Theorem and Eternal Cyclic Cosmology | Science and Culture Today

It's not another of those plastic NAID articles which sets so-called "natural forces" over and against "intelligent intervention design ", but instead probes the deep question of an initial creation point. It's particular concern is the defense of the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem. This theorem tells us that the geodesics of any universe subject to an on going average expansion, when traced back in time, will converge onto a singularity - that is, an infinitesimal point where it is likely that 0/0 divisions lead to indefinite results which our current physics cannot handle; in short a place where known physics breaks down. When this happens it is impossible to reverse the clock any further back and therefore the singularity effectively becomes a creation point; a point where the universe starts.  

The BGV "creation point theorem" has been a God-send to those theists who support the Kalam arguments for a creator God such as William Lane-Craig. Conversely, it has also been a target for atheists who feel uncomfortable about a creation point and who have therefore tendered physical models which attempt get round this theorem. Bruce Gordon is doing a series of articles that critiques such attempts to overthrow the BGV theorem (*1)

Although Gordon looks as though he is doing a thorough & worthy job I'm not sure that I would want to be too strongly committed to BGV myself. For example, some of the critics of the theorem point out that space-time may not be a continuum (*2) and this puts a question mark over the assumption of geodesic continuity which BGV uses. However, a mere question mark over BGV would not necessarily invalidate BGV; rather it would just have the effect of telling us that BGV cannot be regarded as settled theoretical science which in turn would unsettle attempts to use it in Kalam style arguments. 

But even from a Biblical point of view it is not immediately clear to someone like myself that the Genesis 1 account, where we read about a sequence of separations imposing organization on an existing ontology, teaches a definite creation point; in this connection the semantic intent behind Gen 1:1 is important  - but I'll leave that question to the theologians. 

Whether or not BGV is valid or whether or not Genesis 1 teaches an absolute beginning is not something I'm going to discuss here. What I would like to point out in this post is that for both atheists and theists so much hangs on the question of whether the cosmos had an absolute beginning. Why do theists put so much investment in absolute beginnings and why do atheist seek to theoretically over throw absolute origins physics in favor of an eternal universe? 

I've already criticized Kalam-like arguments for putting too much stress on the contingent boundary conditions needed at a creation point when in fact it is clear that the cosmic organization mathematically implicit in the "algorithms" of physics entails a highly contingent logical boundary everywhere and everywhen (*3). The question then is this; what motivates both theist's and atheist's deep interest in potential creation-points where indefinite 0/0 divisions entail a breakdown of known physics? The likely (subliminal?) mindsets which drive this interest on both sides of the debate is something I've only recently become cognizance of: My strong suspicion is that the underlying obsession with arguments which  tender either creation-points or anti-creation-point models is a theological mindset common to both theists and atheists. With atheists that mindset may well be subliminal.

If atheists can find alternatives to BGV and convince themselves that the cosmos might just possibly be eternal where does that put the concept of an eternal God? Is there room for two eternal entities? i.e both God & the cosmos? In attempting to give the cosmos an eternal existence atheists are giving it a quality once thought to only pertain to God. Although to be sure atheists haven't proved it, an eternal cosmos would suggest that like theism's God, the ontology of the eternal cosmos must therefore have an underlying logical necessity which was once thought to only be inherent to the ontology of the Divine (*5). In short for anti-creation-point atheism the cosmos has become a kind of eternal "god", in so far as it has created the Stars, the Earth and its living hosts. But this atheist "god" is an impersonal soulless "god" of utter dispassionate indifference; it has absolutely no awareness, let alone any interest, in our continued existence. According to atheist physicist Brian Cox the huge cosmic machine will, without a scintilla of regret one-day extinguish us. As Brian says.....

In 10 trillion years the last star will fade. The universe becomes a void without light, life or meaning. The darkness will last forever. As the stars fade so does all possibility of life and meaning.

That sums up the hope and outlook of many an atheist; this is where their logic takes them. What atheists believe to be an insentient cosmic machine (*4) has of course no interest in calling us to account for our failure to live up to the demands of the superego. No surprise then that some theists are brazen enough to suggest that the atheist's cosmos of a complete indifference to our morality explains what is behind motivated atheism's enthusiasm for eternal universes.

Footnotes

*1 See the following link for another of Gordon's articles:

Past-Eternal Loop Quantum Cosmology Gets the Bounce | Science and Culture Today

*2 My own (highly speculative) notions around Quantum Non-linearity which derive quantum gravity from the approximations of the diffusion equation are of this ilk: Gravity and Quantum Non-Linearity - Timothy Reeves - Google Books

*3 See this post Quantum Non-Linearity: The Kalam Argument Sucks.

*4 See: TheRiddleOfTheSphinx.pdf - Google Drive.

See also: cosmicPerspective3.pdf - Google Drive

*5  I am unaware of any really convincing ontological arguments for God any more than I'm aware of ontological arguments for the logical necessity of the observed cosmos. See Carrier, R for a failed attempt to generate an organized cosmos from probability theory.

On The Meaning of Life

 

Picture from Quantum Non-Linearity: The Fate of Man, by William Shakespeare

In this post by PZ Myers we find our grumpy atheist responding to a less than 60 second video by a cherub faced American Catholic who challenges atheists over their response to the question of the meaning of life. Here's PZ reaction to that video (My emphases)....

My answer to that question is simple: there is no meaning to life. We just are. We exist, and then we try to rationalize our existence, and everyone comes up with a different explanation because our brains will happily spin their wheels in the absence of anything of substance to grapple with.

Maybe you disagree, and maybe you have the one true meaning of life. That’s fine, go ahead and tell me what it is, but if you could, please also tell me what objective evidence you have to support your proposed purpose. Also tell me what makes this purpose a property of life — is it shared with spiders and clams and sugar gliders and ants? After all, they live, too.

That reaction aligns nicely with atheist Galen Strawson's response which I mention here:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Galen Strawson on "Why is there something?"

In the foregoing post I quote Strawson telling us that:

I don’t for all that think the universe has a purpose. I think it just is.

... which in turn aligns with Bertrand Russell who said that....

I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all [there is to it!]

So yes, atheists do hit an impenetrable logically contingent barrier (*1) when it comes to the purpose of our highly organized cosmos, if indeed they can even give a coherent meaning to terms like "purpose" when it comes to the cosmos at large. 

But Myers is not at all being unreasonable in asking for objective evidence of anyone who (like myself) has opted for the search for meaning, purpose and the Divine (see Acts 17:23-28). I also agree that we instinctively try to rationalize and make sense of life.  But as I said in a footnote to this post:

Christianity has a strong existential component in its evidences; that is, Christianity is partly dependent on the testimony of personal experiences. This slant toward anecdotal evidence, of course, cannot qualify as being on the same footing as the formal and sharable evidences of our science which depends on an a-priori high organization. (See also here)

But in spite of that I don't think Christian conclusions are as variable, arbitrary and subjective as PZ makes out: I'm sure I've got a lot of common ground with Catholics and even with cultic fundies like Ken Ham (*2). But I doubt I have very much in common with spiders who probably have no where near the minimum intellectual apparatus needed to formulate questions of meaning! Anyway, nice try PZ, but let's both keep searching for the truth and live the moral lives our superegos tell us we should live; at least we have that in common!

Footnote

(*1) And once again, we can write-off conceited blowhard Richard Carrier's attempt to explain order in terms of disorder. (See here for more on disorder)

(*2) However let me acknowledge that a crypto-cultist like Ken is likely to regard my faith as utterly inferior (See here for Ken's opinion of those Christians who don't support the theme of his theme park; to him they are barely Christian!)

And Again: Where North American ID goes wrong

                    Time for another critique of North American ID

North American ID tends to veer toward political partisanship
Picture from: https://www.discovery.org/

On several counts I can give a cautious endorsement to the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) movement. But this is a very qualified endorsement as I have criticisms of both their intellectual position and their cultural & political posturing (*3). See for example my criticism of Casey Luskin in this series. Moreover, my acceptance of the intelligent design argument for God is very cautious compared to NAID culture; for given that we are extrapolating from our experience with the works of human and animals (& aliens?) who act within the created context, to the works of a very Alien Totalizing Being who is postulated to be The Context of creation, it seems a bit of a stretch to claim that we can uncritically use what we observe of human and animal intelligence as a model for the intelligence of God. However, I would certainly concede that given the remarkable and irreducible organization of our cosmos, which for me most forcibly emerges in the descriptive effectiveness of the elegant algorithms of physics, there is a compelling intuition that by analogy the cosmos itself has its origins in an all embracing intelligence. This feeling is further reinforced when set against the arguments of arrogant atheist blowhard Richard Carrier who deludes himself with his misconceptions about probability theory as he attempts to account for physics as an aspect of randomness. 

However, as I have suggested in this short paper, I nevertheless take a rather reserved attitude toward the simple extrapolation of design arguments for God using Bayesian ideas. For me a faithful & personal God is an a-priori feature of my world view (Hebs 11:6), a feature which not only promotes a successful epistemology but also makes ultimate sense of a seemingly senseless world, a world whose irreducibly contingent organization is otherwise destined to remain an enigma. On this account God is not a simple inductive extrapolation from observation but rather the initial step in an abductive approach which gives anthropic meaning and purpose to the world (*1). Without this sense making world view one is left with little but a bleak absurdity where nothing makes sense (see Brian Cox). So, whilst I'm in sympathy with the general thrust of the NAID movement (but not their politics) I would nevertheless want to point out that they have over invested in the following points of view.....

1. The so called explanatory filter: When applied to human, animal and even alien activity, activity which takes place within the creation this filter works. But it all too easily leads to naive "God of the Gaps" thinking when applied to divine activity. This has mislead NAIDs to commit to needless subliminal "God-of-the-gaps" thinking as evidenced by their total commitment to anti-evolutionism.

3. Anti-evolutionism: OK, I can accept that some theists, from a theological point of view, might find evolution difficult to stomach. But we cannot rule out evolution on the basis of the category mistake that it classifies as a "blind natural force". If the Divine is as totalizing as Christian theology suggests then there is no such thing as "blind natural forces" incapable of filling explanatory gaps which according to NAID otherwise need filling with the interventions of divine design. If the process of evolution as commonly conceived has taken place in relatively short cosmic times then it is itself a remarkable work of creation. If you are going to argue against evolution it must be from empirical grounds not on the basis of God-of-the-gaps intuitions about the inability of "blind natural forces" (sic) to fill a gap that can only be filled with divine hocus-pocus. 

2. Anti-Junk DNA: There is no obliging need for theists to commit themselves one way or the other on this question; again, it must be on empirical grounds that this dispute is settled. Who can tell just what a contextually totalizing Being would or would not want to do with redundant/random coding in his DNA. My own uncompiled computer code is usually littered with the developmental legacy of historical but now redundant coding, so who knows what the Great Unknown of the Divine Mind might do. 

4. Information can't be created by "blind natural forces"? This is false: See here. Grumpy atheist PZMyers has recently & rightly taken NAID Stephen Myer to task on this one - see here: I have to roll my eyes when a creationist says information! Behind the NAID view on information generation is their subliminal "God-of-the-gaps" mentality; for them any sophisticated information becomes a "gap" incapable of being filled with "blind natural forces" and therefore demands deity intelligence to fill it. (*2)

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The notion that only enigmatic intelligence can create information may be based on the idea that somehow human intelligence should be categorized as a mysterious incomprehensible and transcendent process. To support this NAIDs may point to Roger Penrose's ideas about intelligence making use of non-computable processes.

I have critiqued Penrose's work here.  This work appears to have its origin in the fact that no finite system can fully be "self-aware". Full "self-awareness", for finite systems, opens up the potential for self-referencing contradictions. However, an outside perspective of an ontology external to a subject intelligence can be fully aware of the processes of that subject intelligence. 

Apart from my criticisms above, the following post on Science and Culture is much more to my liking than NAID knee-jerk anti-evolutionism....

Inscrutable Dice, Hitchcock’s Beans, and Cosmological Fine-Tuning | Science and Culture Today

However. I suspect some of the issues this writer raises can be short cut once we get a handle on the concept if randomness.  Theorems around randomness have no bounds as to the sizes of the sets to which they apply. 

Footnotes
*1 Christianity has a strong existential component in its evidences; that is, Christianity is partly dependent on the testimony of personal experiences. This slant toward anecdotal evidence, of course, cannot qualify as being on the same footing as the formal and sharable evidences of our science which depends on an a-priori high organization. 

*2 What I would concede however is that there is a cosmic sized "gap" everywhere and everywhen in as much as the descriptive nature of science is incapable of furnishing logical closure on the ultimate question of existence. 

*3 I also look askance at the mutual backslapping tribal culture that is the NAID community. This culture is not conducive to independent interest-free thinking;  it creates conflicts of interest.  It is probably true to say however that the gelling of their tribal culture has been encouraged by the vociferous and unfair opposition they have received from some quarters. See here

Current Projects

 I'm currently re-thinking and re-writing this project...

Quantum Non-Linearity: Signaled Diffusion Book IV: Real Numbers vs Complex Numbers

....and I'm also engaged in preparing material for the Church's Bible Course.. See here....

Norwich Churches and Belief Communities: Bible Course 2.0 Supplementary Resources

Hence, my posts won't be so frequent for a while. In the meantime this video looks interesting....

 

It's worth comparing the above video with Richard Carrier's misuse of probability when he reacts against this kind of material.

See also my notes on Bayes theorem and God

Atheist's Corner

Below are some quotes from a couple of UK's well known atheists; Alice Roberts and Brian Cox (*1). From their media appearances alone both come over as nice people. Although they are unlikely to have a great deal of respect for my own God seeking quest they strike me as polite people who would not be rude about it. But whatever! Let me now look at those quotes:

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ALICE ROBERTS:

MY COMMENT: I assume that by "non-religious people" Alice means people who don't kowtow to deities of any form and in any case have no proactive or practical belief in them. I don't know the history of non-belief myself but I'll take Alice's word for it that such people have always existed. I would nevertheless want to comment that my feel for history suggests that non-religious people of this ilk were usually in a minority, although this may not be true of modern Western societies. Moreover, it does seem that even in this modern age belief in deities or at the very least a mystical feeling that "there is something out there" is still very widespread; this fragment of observational evidence could be bundled together with other evidences to help build a case for theism. 

Where I get a bit stuck with Alice's statement is with the meaning of her natural phenomenon vs. supernatural side distinction. If we are working with the assumption that natural phenomenon refers to the patterns of our observations which conform to those highly organised and succinct principles we call "laws" then the natural phenomenon category is simply a construct of our definitions. This definition of the "natural world" as a regime of faithfully operating laws standing in contradistinction to deities has, I believe, only become really clear since the enlightenment. However, given this definition it is then very tempting to rule out the far less tractable world of exceptions to the rule, phenomenal erratics, the experientially bizarre and the startlingly unique as mistaken anomalies because their unmanageable infrequency compromises their sense of reality. So called natural phenomenon is then not just a passive category but a way of proactively sorting out the observational sheep from the goats.

But in any case the so called "natural world" with its remarkable and irreducible organization is in another very real sense highly supernatural; that is, its arbitrary contingency leaves me at least with the feeling of an unnatural contrivance. See in particular evolutionary theory. Crass attempts to trivialize this irreducibility by abusing probability theory or via multiverse concepts don't work for me. 

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BRIAN COX:

MY COMMENT: I wasn't aware this checking principle Brian refers to works as a catch-all principle even for natural phenomenon. Some objects subject to scientific checking such as paleontological, sociological, economic and historical theories, and in particular theories in evolutionary psychology where the intervening mists of time and other epistemic distance factors start to take effect make fact testing problematic. (See here).

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BRIAN: 

MY COMMENT: Well, yes Brian that is not only a very interesting question, but I would rate it as the most significant question of all. But I think Brian is going to have great difficulty answering such a question; for if as I think he has opined the only source of the meaning of life comes from what we personally invest in it then such subjectivity will ensure that life means different things to different people with the inevitable clashes of interest this will imply. 

Brian believes that the universe itself has no objective meaning of anthropic interest because all patterns and objects of interest are destined to die in the inevitable heat death of the universe. This cosmic destiny makes the elegant laws of physics as anthropically absurd as they are pointless.  

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MEANWHILE ON PZ MYERS' BLOG: 

PZ Myers is a really grumpy atheist; that may be because he's got various health issues. I can wish him better health although I won't pray for him as he probably hates the idea of prayer. But then who wouldn't be grumpy if you had to live in a country with a strong mix of Christian dominionists, quasi-fascists in powerful positions and a country which is the source of much Christian fundamentalist and anti-science thinking (like Ken Ham *2); and all that's before we get onto the subject of the breathtakingly egotistical D. Trump. On his blog post here PZ quotes a certain Mano Singham and then adds his own indorsing comment: See below (my emphases):

MANO SINGHAM: I left religion for purely logical reasons. not emotional ones. I found that however hard I tried, I just could not reconcile the scientific view that everything (?) occurs according to natural laws with the traditional religious view that seemed to require an entity that could bypass those laws to act in the world to change the course of events. It took me a long time to overcome the emotional attachment to the religious beliefs (and now he's emotionally attached to science? - ed) that I had. So while I can understand how logical reasoning can make one leave religion, (speak for yourself Mano - ed) I cannot see how it can drive the reverse process.... 

PZ MYERS:  Same here, except that my family faith tradition didn’t have much of an emotional attachment to Christianity, so shedding it was relatively trivial. I agree, though, that there are no good rational reasons to compel return to a faith, which is why I reject any attempts to rationalize it. It feels good to you, it connects you to friends and family, you have fond memories of your time in church (and makes sense of life? - ed) …that’s fine. I believe you. Go ahead, I’m not going to deny your feelings. But if you try to tell me you have compelling, logical, scientific reasons to believe in a god, I’m going to tell you you’re full of sh*t. (like I said, he's as grumpy as hell - ed)

MY COMMENT: Well, yes I'd agree; if you are expecting the verification of theism to be a simple case of testing as one might test accessible physical theories like Hooke's law or theories testable by test-tube precipitate then you won't find that kind of compelling "logical" scientific reason to believe in God. In fact testing for the existence of God, a totalizing personality in whose immanent being we are immersed, (Acts 17:27-28) is even more of an epistemic challenge than testing social, economic and historical theories. Much of the evidence relevant to God's existence revolves round personal anecdote, patchy historical documents, and above all a motivation to bring sense, meaning and purpose to both personal and community life. Perhaps that's what PZ is trying to express in his sentence above which I have emboldened. "God seeking" is an existential reaction whereby the individual seeks to find an all-embracing world view which provides meaning and purpose in life.  Christianity is a golden key which unlocks meaning and explains the human predicament.

The meaning of immanence: Pip, a computer games character,
wants to know where the computer simulating him dwells.

But here is the ironic twist: Just as the simple logic of a scientific  kind isn't sufficient to argue that theism is a logical truism, conversely neither is the elementary observational sampling which reveals very general laws a sufficient logical basis to argue one out of theism as Mano is proposing. If anything the strange & ultimately logically unjustifiable high organization which facilitates our expression of that order as those elegant mathematical laws of physics has a strange way of compelling us (at least myself) to start speculating about a logically true creating and sustaining context beyond them: After all, descriptive science cannot get round the impenetrable logical barrier of contingency; if we are looking for the underlying logic which supports the astounding & startling cosmic order we must look beyond that cosmos; at this point it is a very natural human instinct, in fact a very compelling intuition, to evoke the concept of God as Designer, Creator and Sustainer. But such a conclusion is a proprietary one, one which belongs to the individual; for example I myself cannot reconstruct those "purely logical reasons" (sic) which drove Mano Singham away from theism.

Mano's insistence that the existence of physical laws logically bar the existence of a creating and sustaining entity at whose pleasure the course of events may change capriciously betrays an obvious prejudice in his thinking. After all, few of us bulk at the idea that an otherwise fairly sound theoretical framework (like Newton's laws) may well under certain circumstance be bypassed in favour of a more general theoretical framework (like relativity or quantum mechanics), a framework which is the outer context in which less general patterns of behavior are immersed.  So, I take it that Mano only accepts exceptions to rule if they are the outcome of higher level laws. That is, he has an a priori prejudice which means he cannot accept a theistic outer framework. For him it is "turtles all the way down" where in his case the "turtles" are physical laws. For me, of course, the existence of those remarkable general laws governing a highly ordered cosmos has exactly the opposite effect; it drives me to theistic speculations. 

For Mano the unalterable natural laws cannot be bypassed and therefore he elevates them to a kind natural-law deism. So, conversely if PZ is going to accuse those who "try to tell me you have compelling, logical, scientific reasons to believe in a god, I’m going to tell you you’re full of sh*t." (and he might be right)  then does that mean if you try to tell me you have compelling, logical, scientific reasons to reject God, I’m going to tell you you’re full of sh*t? It would, however, be more polite and true to say that Mano's argument is based on innate gut reaction rather than logic. 

Footnotes

*1  Brian Cox appears to be in a mixed state of atheism and agnosticism: According Brian's Wiki page....

Brian Cox has stated he lacks a belief in deities and is a humanist, but he has sometimes rejected the label "atheist" in favor of saying he has "no personal faith". He has indicated he cannot be sure a God does not exist and that science cannot answer every question

*2  Young earthism is of course an ugly manifestation of Ken's fundamentalism. In young earthism God's created objects are sending out false messages about a history they never had. But even if God downloads created objects "as is" straight into creation, they each presumably are first assembled in the mind of God implying that even in Ken's "as is" creation objects have a history in the sense of a history in the divine mind. 

Physics' irreducible logical barrier

There's an isomorphism between data compression and the laws of physics: In the physical sciences observation collects "original data".(blue topped cylinder). Because the cosmos is highly organized this allows human theorizers (the "compressor") to describe its patterns of behavior in the form of succinct (or "compressed") mathematical laws (green cylinder).  We can then think of a physical system as a way of "decompressing" those laws and presenting us with our conscious experience of the world (orange topped cylinder). 

The laws of physics are mathematical devices which are effective because we live in a highly organized universe. This organization makes it possible to describe the patterns of the universe in the succinct forms we call the laws of physics. The opposite of this cosmic high organization is disorder or randomness which by definition eludes simple mathematical description. The purely descriptive role of mathematical science has been a big theme of this blog. See here for example.

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The following post, written by an Eric Hedin on the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) website "Science & Culture", looks to be an important conceptual step (forward?) for the NAID community...

 Can Equations Serve as a Designer Substitute? | Science and Culture Today

Am I interested in this post because it picks up on that same theme of the purely descriptive nature of physical science, although it appears to make no connection between the high organization of our experience of the world and the succinct mathematical formulations with which we find we can describe it. However, quoting from this post (with my emphases).....

This limitation (i,e, the descriptive nature of science) also applies to all the laws of physics that scientists have visualized, discovered, or derived. These “laws” merely describe how things work in this universe, based on our observations and experiments on what already exists.  "Physics is a mathematical exploration of the universe. We look for patterns, structures, symmetries, and relationships. We use math to capture and describe those patterns, structures, symmetries, and relationships." .....For example, Newton’s universal law of gravitation doesn’t cause an apple to fall from a tree, it simply describes the force between it and the Earth and the apple’s subsequent rate of acceleration towards the ground. No statement of the “law of gravity” has any power to produce the actors or the action in this simple drama.....These expostulations regarding the limitations of the utility of the laws of physics may seem obvious,

Yes, I agree, this lesson does seem obvious. The descriptive nature of science became obvious to me as soon as I was introduced to mathematical science...oh, about 55 years ago.  But it is surprising how many people seem unable to see this and believe the laws of physics have some much deeper "causative" role; for some people these laws are the metaphysical "why?" rather than the mere descriptive  "how". But descriptive mathematical science can never "self-explain"; the best it can do is compress its descriptive algorithms in increasingly succinct forms. But ultimately physics is destined to leave us with an incompressible kernel of apparently contingent information. 

If as Hedin appears to understand this hard core of contingency is irreducible this then opens up the question of the ultimate source or the  "why?" behind the cosmos, if indeed "why?" is an intelligible question. Mathematical physics is not self-referencing in way which means it contains its own explanation. In fact as atheist philosophers Bertrand Russell and Galen Strawson said the universe "just is" (*1)..... because human science can only rightly be expected to supply the "how" but not the deeper "why?" Russell and Strawson are telling us we just have to accept what it throws at us as the given status quo. For motivated atheists the question "why?", which if taken as a desire to find purpose and design behind the universe, is not only a meaningless question but also an anathema. 

But does the enigma of the impassible doorway where descriptive  science leaves us imply that a "designer" is to be found on the other side of that door, as Hedin suggests? Design arguments based on observations made in archeological contexts might suggest that via analogy design arguments are the next port of call in our thinking about cosmic origins. But I don't readily agree with the NAIDs who try to make out that the science of intelligent design, which does apply to archeological artifacts (and perhaps even alien technology) can automatically be extrapolated to the total cosmic context with its high organization. The concept of a totalizing God, who is the outer context in which a whole universe lives, moves and has its being (Acts 17:27-28), is an entirely different genus of entity to humans and aliens: The latter beings are intelligences which move & work within the contingent giveness of creation, as did the Greek gods of old. 

People like myself who propose a creator God are doing so on the basis of a design metaphor, rather than via the logic of ID science, a science which can only be worked out for intelligent agencies who work within the cosmic context.  For me what urges the use of this metaphor is an overwhelming sense that there must be anthropic meaning and purpose to be found on the other side of the enigmatic cliff hanger where descriptive science leaves us. Unless we are going to go along with the "just is" atheism of Russel and Strawson purpose and meaning can be found if we use Hebrews 11:6 as an axiomatic epistemic life principle.....

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

So, I largely agree with what Hedin says here..

To achieve “something rather than nothing” requires more than an equation, more than mathematics — it takes an intelligent mind to imagine what could be and, it would seem, the power of God to bring it to pass.

I can say "Yes" to that because my experience with sophisticated and highly organized configurations in this world does get me thinking along designer lines. But because the concept of "God" is of a totalizing entity in which the observable cosmos is immersed, the ID argument is at best an argument from analogy with a motivation based on largely theological urges & presuppositions and above all the search for purpose and meaning. 

As I discussed in this series of posts there is a feeling even among atheists like R. Carrier that there must be something out there, perhaps something we may find difficult to understand, which is a logical necessity and which is the source of our universe (*1); that source is not going to be descriptive algorithmic physics which inevitably leaves us at a logical hiatus. The status of algorithmic physics is as far as we know contingent; conceivably physics could be something other than what we know (*2). Hence the only way we can arrive at the physics of the universe and nail down the precise nature of its contingency is not through pure logic but through observation. I think this is what Hedin is trying to say here...

Even if an internally consistent theory of “quantum gravity” were developed, its correctness would remain in doubt. The reason is that the universe is contingent — it doesn’t have to play by our suppositions, and the only way to know for certain if any theory or model of nature is valid is to see if nature behaves according to its predictions.

Yes, I agree. But the "just is" atheism of Russel and Strawson, may regard it as futile, if not meaningless to pursue further explanatory aims that seek to answer "why?". It is ironic, however, that for the Christian Hebrews 11:6 suggests a similar "just is" attitude toward the reality of God himself. But in contrast to "just is" atheism (*3) Christian theology does help address the human yearning for ultimate justice, purpose and meaning and also helps fill that "God shaped hole" in our psyche. 

Footnotes

*1 At least Russel and Strawson are being coherent here. Compare that with Richard Carrier's absurd argument employing a bogus concept of probability as a kind logical truism capable of creating a universe. 

*2 Anthropic ideas, however, suggest that only a limited range of cosmic conditions favour a form of life advanced enough to make observations on the cosmos. 

*3 See also Brian Cox on the cosmic perspective.

Misrepresenting North American Intelligent Design

I've skimmed over the following article on the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) web site, Science and Culture....

On Scopes and Dover, Robert Pennock Twists History and Science | Science and Culture Today

Basically it's a long complaint about professor of philosophy Robert Pennock who in an article in American Scientists is accused of misrepresenting NAID. According to the article Pennock does no justice to the considerable differences between Young Earth fundamentalism and NAID. The article tells us that...

When it comes to intelligent design (ID), Pennock misleadingly charges that the “fundamental beliefs” of “ID creationists” are “continuous with those of creation-science”

Well, if the Science and Culture article is anything to go by I would agree: Pennock should have acknowledged the gulf between NAID  as an umbrella broad church, quasi-evolutionary community and the narrowness of YEC fundamentalism: NAID is a very different culture to YEC; it is much more tolerant than YEC fundamentalism toward a blend of opinions which subsume under the heading of ID.  By and large the NAID community are old earthers and therefore by implication they accept that natural history is evolutionary in the weaker sense that life has emerged bit by bit over a considerable period of time. Where the contention with NAID lies is in its identification of the precise mechanism of that emergence. 

So yes, going by the S&C article I'd agree that Pennock has created a distorted picture of the NAID community and I would blame the Pennocks of this world, in part, for the right-ward drift of the NAID community as they have found powerful allies in the Christian nationalist far-right. (e.g. the late Charlie Kirk; see also here). Pennock is attempting to simplify social reality by lumping together his antagonists into a single block. 

The kind of position propounded by Pennock is pretty much embedded in mainstream texts. Evidence of this can be seen in the replies I got from Google using two slightly different prompts on two different days. Viz: 

Prompt: North American Intelligent Design (My emphases)....

GOOGLE: "Intelligent design" (ID) in the North American context is a pseudoscientific, neo-creationist movement that asserts certain features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, rather than undirected natural processes like natural selection. The movement is primarily centered in the United States and driven by the Discovery Institute.

Prompt: North American Intelligent Design community (My emphases).... 

GOOGLE: The North American intelligent design (ID) community primarily consists of advocates and organizations, largely centered around the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC) in Seattle, Washington. This movement promotes the viewpoint that certain features of the universe and living beings are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than undirected natural processes like natural selection.

Let me make a special note of the phrasing used by Google.: Viz....

This movement promotes the viewpoint that certain features of the universe and living beings are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than undirected natural processes like natural selection.

Those quotes are very telling; it's the old intelligent agency vs blind natural forces dichotomy surfacing yet again! In fact it's the very dichotomy that NAID pundits use again and again (See here for example). The irony is that evolution, if it is the mechanism behind natural history, can hardly be called blind or undirected - in fact it would classify as a very remarkable process that in itself would have to be carefully designed - see here for more on that subject. 

The NAID community have actually known for a long while that evolution requires some extraordinary choreographing if it is to be an effective process. I first became aware that the NAID community had in their midst someone who understood this as far back 2009 when I discussed William Dembski's concept of Active Information: See here, here and here. Dembski brought up the subject of the Avida program which attempts to simulate an elementary model of evolutionary creation, a process whose inner engine drives the emergence of highly complex self-perpetuating, self-sustaining configurations. The Science & Culture article also mentions the Avida program as follows (My emphases):

But the Avida genetic algorithm he references precisely shows the need for intelligence to build complexity. Avida uses “mutations” that are pre-programmed and intelligently engineered to yield great leaps in complexity, not blind “slight modifications” that Darwin’s theory requires. As pro-ID computer scientist Winston Ewert put it, Avida was “designed to evolve.”

Well, yes, yes and yes to that, but also a great big whopping No! Sorry chaps, but you've just help promote the atheist version of Darwin's theory; that's because you've swallowed the atheist interpretation of this theory which axiomatizes the blind natural forces vs intelligent agency dichotomy which I've complained about so many times; my latest rant on this subject was against NAID pundit Casey Luskins (again, see here).  For evolution to work certain minimum conditions must hold and these minimum conditions must be embodied in the following caricatured equation which controls diffusion through multidimensional configuration space...

Equation 1

...where Y represents the medium diffusing through configuration space, D is the diffusion constant and the "house" operator is a multidimensional version of the 3-dimensional "Del" operator. The intelligent information is incorporated into the VY term which must superimpose a network of channels on configuration space constraining the diffusion (I call that network the "spongeam"). This equation also tells us that the random motions of entropy are actually the motive force which drives the system toward the complex organization encoded in V, just as gas pressure drives gas through a network of conduits; it also explains why the  trend toward increasing entropy is consistent with the appearance of organised complex configurations - something which many NAIDs simply refuse to come to terms with. (e.g. Granville Sewell.  See footnotes *1 & *2)

If bog standard evolution is to be a viable process the crucial information must be incorporated in V. May be this has been achieved via the standard laws of physics which include an array of constants with who knows how many digits after the decimal point, thus storing large amounts of information. Or perhaps the Divine mind patches in the channels without the use of clever & subtle mathematics. Or it may be that NAID pundit William Dembski is right and that the physics of the cosmos implies that functionality only occurs in isolated islands; if Dembski is right then this would be a show-stopper as far as standard evolution is concerned; in which case the incremental trial and error computations needed to arrive at self-sustaining designs are taking place in the divine mind and are then patched ad-hoc into nature. As far as I'm concerned Demsbki could well be right, but I have my doubts; I have a feeling that God being the sort of person he is has reified his calculations by impressing them upon natural history; in which case Dembski is wrong. Personally I'm not dogmatic about my position on this question.

However, NAID William Dembski is wrong when he asserts that "natural forces", so called, cannot increase information. But as we saw here this equation,,,,, 

             I <= S + Log(T)

Equation 2

....tells us how information I increases with the Log of the number of steps in time T given the algorithmic information S. That divinely maintained linear time generates information very slowly has confused many that it can't generate information at all. However, that algorithmically controlled processing can generate information becomes much clearer when parallel processing is replaced with expanding parallelism and the equation above looks more like this

                                                                                I <= S + T

                                                                                    ****

Why do the NAID's not like evolution even though one can plausibly maintain that in the light of it's overwhelming surprisal value it is another manifestation of creative design and maintenance? Well to my mind the above equation might throw some light on this question. Conventional evolution demands that the contingent algorithmic information represented by S has an a priori high level of sophistication; but - and this is where NAID (and also many fundies) have their issues - evolution, as we conceive it, also demands very large numbers of temporal steps, T. To suggest such is a dangerous precedent to both NAIDs and fundamentalists; for too big a value of T suggests that the "blind natural forces" (sic) of time are the mechanism of evolution! Like a mindless enlightenment automata that mechanism is thought (wrongly) to allow the Divine mind to stand back and watch; that for many a naïve theist is a very worrying trending thought indeed....Time itself seems to be doing the work of creation and not some intervening deity; so let's do away with deity; it apparently serves no purpose! It's as if miracles are only perceived to reside in S and not in T. Crypto deism still rules the western mind. 

Diffusional Evolution cannot be ruled out on the basis that it is a "blind natural force": If indeed it is the mechanism driving the dynamic of natural history, then it is a highly sophisticated process which invites speculation about divine design. OK, it may not pass the islands of functionality test (Well, actually we don't know with high certainty if it does or doesn't) but NAID has not ruled it out on that basis: As my repeated analysis of their writings show, they rule it out on the spurious basis of being a wholly "blind natural force" which is certainly not true. In this respect the NAID community has dug itself into a hole as an anti-evilution movement. Although I have great sympathy with the misrepresentation of NAID, it seems that the trench digging on both sides of an intellectual no-man's land means the battle lines have ossified. 

****

Natural vs Supernatural?

One final comment I would like to make on the Science & Culture article concerns this passage : 

The Edwards ruling found that creationism was unconstitutional because it referred to a “supernatural creator,” and Pennock claims that ID requires “supernatural creation.” Yet he again ignores that pre-publication drafts of Pandas said the opposite. As John West notes, “Pandas carefully distinguishes between ‘supernatural’ causes and ‘intelligent’ causes, for intelligent causes are amenable to scientific investigation, whereas it is impossible to detect whether a cause is ‘supernatural.’”7 One pre-publication draft of Pandas provides a typically clear statement to this effect: “observable instances of information cannot tell us if the intellect behind them is natural or supernatural. This is not a question that science can answer.” Such reasoning differs crucially from creationism, which (as the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in Edwards) always appeals to the supernatural. ID does not do this. Thus, even when using language referring to “creationism” or derivative terms, the Pandas textbook differed from classical creationism in fundamental philosophical, scientific, and legally important ways.

How can we tell what is supernatural and what isn't? The almost unrelenting high organization of our experiences does, however, give us a strong sense of normalcy: It is this sense of stable normalcy which allows us to mathematically define an apparently solid world of matter and this also facilitates experimental replication and testing, almost at will. At the other end of the spectrum are those far less accessible objects which generate once-in-a-while experiential output. 

But suppose we impose an a priori a world view whereby we only accept testable experiential output as valid if it is considered to be a consequence of what we believe to be immutable patterns of output conforming to mathematical algorithms? The assumption behind this world view can be then used to not only distinguish between the natural and the supernatural but also used as a basis to rule out observations which cut across the theoretical status quo; in this social context "supernatural" experiences are regarded as bogus. Thus experiential anomalies and erratics are dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders as mistaken; a psychological foible of human beings. 

Once again we see that the NAID community have swallowed a popular dichotomy - in this case the "supernatural vs natural" dichotomy. In my view it is better to commit to a far less stark concept of an observational spectrum which ranges from the normal to the supernormal. 

Footnotes

*1 Sewell is still trying to put the same case even today. See here;

For Darwin Skeptics, What Does Second Law Argument Accomplish? | Science and Culture Today

He appears not to have seen the possible implications of accepting that the whole cosmos has been created by a super intelligence (and the implications of equation 1 above). As the NAIDs themselves have admitted this opens the possibility that the universe has "been designed to evolve" (See Winston Ewart's quote above). This is not to say that evolution as currently understood has actually taken place, but if it has we cannot follow those atheists (and Sewell?) who then assume that evolution automatically entails no design. 

*2 The diffusion term obeys the H theorem but the V term does not. That's because V is an external perturbation. That is, in order to restore the H theorem one must embrace the system that is causing the perturbation V. The point is that the although overall order decreases (as proved by the H theorem), subsystems within the total system can increase in order.