Yet Again: Intelligence of the Gaps. Part II

(This post is still undergoing correction and enhancement)

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

 

(See here for Part I)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note: The emphases in the quotes below are mine. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2.  He is unclear about conditional probabilities.

3.  He does not define entropy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                                        To be continued......

 FOOTNOTES

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

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

Evidence, but not as we know it.

 

Grumpy atheist PZ Myers (left above; with the beard) criticizes (rightly in my opinion) the presumptuous assertion of the lady on the right who asks why we should accept evolutionary theory when evolution was "made up by a guy" (presumably she's thinking of Darwin). Well of course one can anticipate straight away what approach PZ is going to take here...evolution wasn't just "made up by a guy", but it is a function of testable evidence;  evolution was no arbitrary creation of Darwin, but it has evidential pointers in its direction; for example anatomical, paleontological and genetic observations which all suggest some kind of common descent is at work. (although the mechanism driving descent might be debated). 

No doubt PZ will counteract by demanding evidence for the Omnigod of Christianity. Fair enough, that's a reasonable demand, but there is an issue with such evidence.  For a start as I've said before intelligent-of-the-gaps arguments fail, and one is left with the evidence of the irreducible logical barrier of physics from which stem strong intuitions (intuitions I share) about this irreducibility having its origins in a sentient creator (*1). But that's not going to work for a grumpy & cynical atheist. Neither is the other sort of evidence likely to impress PZ; namely, the anecdotal & private experiential evidence of Christian living... even if we take, say, miraculous healings as an example, epistemic distance prevents easy access to the data of such experiences. In fact the whole gamut of paranormal observational  irregularities & erratics (if they exist) is a closed book to those who only recognise readily testable normalcy. We cannot expect evidence regarding Deity (or the paranormal in general) to look like the evidence for the simple highly ordered objects of spring extending and test-tube precipitating science. So if grumpy PZ is really serious about wanting evidence of Deity (which somehow I doubt he is), he is just going have to get out on his bike and go and find some anecdotal evidence of his own. (Acts 17:27); let me know, PZ, if you find any in favour of deity. But then you can let yourself off the hook by assuming from the outset that such evidence doesn't exist or is disqualified and therefore no need to bother getting on that bike.

FOOTNOTE

*1 Quantum Non-Linearity: On The Meaning of Life

Yet Again: Intelligence of the Gaps. Part 1

This intelligence-of-the-gaps model is still being used by
  the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) community
 although they will strenuously deny it. As a consequence all
 their eggs are in the anti-evolution basket

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

I have remarked before on the extreme unconditional improbability of evolution; so much so in fact that if evolution has actually occurred it would be Creation on Steroids. See here...

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

If evolution is at least a theoretical possibility then presumably for Christian theists the creation of such a mechanism of development would not be beyond the cognitive resources of an Omnigod (*1).  However, given that our cosmos appears to be a parallel processor rather than one with the capability of exponentially expanding parallelism it would seem that it must have required a heavy dollop of  "starting" or "implicit" information S, as demanded by this equation...

I <= S + Log T

equation 1

...where S is the starting/implicit information, T is the generation time and I the information generated. More about this equation  can be found at the end of this paper here. For conventional evolution to work (assuming it has occurred) S would have to be very large even given the space-time dimensions of our own observable cosmos. There is also the question of just where this implicit information resides: Is it just in the laws of physics and the possibly endless decimal places of its fine tuned constants? I don't claim to know. 

It is not absolutely clear, however, that evolution is even a theoretical possibility: For example it may be that NAID William Dembski is right: He suspects that organic forms employ "isolated" islands of functionality. If this is true then it would be a block to the necessarily gradualist diffusing process across configuration space that is the fundamental underlying mechanism of bog-standard evolution. Theological objections apart, in order to completely eliminate evolution from the inquiry one needs to...

a) Demonstrate mathematically its theoretical impossibility. 

And/Or...

b) Demonstrate that it's not in line with empirical evidence.

Even if it becomes clear that our cosmos supplies neither sufficient implicit information S nor sufficient time T to provision standard evolution it is just possible that some kind of expanding parallelism is being used to circumvent the very sluggish Log term in equation 1. Quantum Mechanics might obliquely hint at the existence of some sort of expanding parallelism but it's a long shot and I'm not going argue that here. 

What I would avoid, however, is the approach of NAID Granville Sewell who is still arguing that the second law of thermodynamics is a theoretical way of eliminating evolution from the inquiry. I'd be contented if he had really shown that evolution is off the agenda if it were not for the fact that he's part of a mutually back-slapping NAID tribe who are governed by a subliminal motivating quest to discover small-time gaps in evolutionary reasoning, gaps which they then fill with Divine intelligent interventions. That the laws of physics will ever remain a single huge impenetrable logical gap everywhere and everywhen is not something the NAID tribe is given to emphasize (see here Quantum Non-Linearity: Physics' irreducible logical barrier); instead NAID culture continues to tinker with what they believe to be the gaps in the natural history record, gaps for all we know, which might have been filled by little grey or green men....whereas the irreducible logical barrier of physics is of an entirely different genus to the gaps in "intelligence-of-the-gaps" and therefore demands an entirely different genus of entity to fill it. 

Behind the scenes NAID culture by and large identifies the creative entity as an Omnigod but plays this down in favour  of positing intelligence as a general creative agent (*3). This has lead them to promote the so-called explanatory filter which they use to detect the work of such agents. This explanatory filter has imposed on them an intelligence vs blind natural forces dichotomy and basically has led them up the garden path; this is because the filter works for beings like humans, animals and aliens(?) which are clearly entities who work within the created context, but the filter fails for a transcendent Omnigod;  such an entity has the potential to scupper any intelligence-of-the-gaps arguments: For if it is theoretically possible, an Omnigod may well fill in a logical gap with logic we have yet to understand. For example if we can't see how evolution could work, then as long evolution is theoretically possible, an Omnigod will presumably have the intellectual resources needed to make it work. In fact NAID culture has effectively  admitted as much: In this link... 

Quantum Non-Linearity: Misrepresenting North American Intelligent Design

....I quote a Science and Culture article as follows....

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.” (*4)

Perhaps the cosmos has been designed to evolve.

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This brings me back to Granville Sewell a NAID who has always maintained that the 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts evolution. True, it may well be that (as I have already observed)...

a) The evolutionary mechanism as we conceive it is theoretically impossible. 

And/Or....

a) Even if conventional evolution is theoretically possible it may or may not be the actual driving mechanism behind natural history; it then becomes an empirical question. 

But I can tell you this: Granville has not refuted evolution in either of these ways although he probably thinks he has. In fact he has just raised some interesting questions that I'm looking at in this series.

I would hazard that the subliminal/unspoken rationale behind Granville's endeavour is that of the NAID movement as a whole: Viz: an God intelligence-of-the-gaps philosophy - although they will likely deny it. All said and done I am myself an Intelligent Design Creationist (*2), so why aren't I looking for those small-time logical gaps in the mechanisms that drive natural history and which for many a NAID is the cause unifying their mutually back-slapping tribe? Well, it may be that such gaps exist but really these gaps pale when one realizes that physics is ever destined to be one big logical gap, everywhere and everywhen (Once again see here: Quantum Non-Linearity: Physics' irreducible logical barrier).

Entropy, contrary to Granville's opinion, is not necessarily connected with disorder. It is in fact a superset of disorder; it includes genuine disorder but because it is defined as the statistical weight of a macrostate. Such a state could be highly ordered in comparison with the absolute disorder of randomness and yet at the same time of maximum entropy. For example, if we have a heavily loaded die with 90% chance of landing a six then a long  sequence of throws with this die would, compared to absolute randomness, be highly organized; the statistical weight of a long sequence of throws with approximately 90% sixes is very low compared to the the statistical weight of the maximally random sequence of the unbiased die. But the sequence generated by the biased die is maximally disordered given the physical constraint of its bias. Putting it another way: The biased die generates a sequence of maximum entropy within the trammels of the physical constraint of the bias. But maximum entropy does not necessarily entail high disorder. Entropy comes in degrees and maximum disorder doesn't necessarily entail high randomness. A configuration could have maximum entropy but that doesn't necessarily mean it is highly disordered. Yes, I'm deliberately labouring the point, because it is clear that Granville doesn't understand it. 

 

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I will now go through Granville's post below which recently appeared on Science & Culture....

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

GRANVILLE: Nevertheless, the second law is all about probability and there is something about the origin and evolution of life, and the development of human intelligence and civilization, that appears to many to defy the spirit, if not the letter, of the second law even if the Earth is an open system. There seems to be something extraordinarily improbable about life.

MY COMMENT: I would not say that the second law is all about probability. The second law is also about the probabilistic maximization of entropy within given physical constraints. It is certainly true that life is extraordinarily improbable if we are talking about the unconditional probability of life. But then it is also true that crystalline structures are extraordinarily improbable if we are talking about their unconditional probability. But with crystalline structures we do have more than an inkling of the conditions (i.e. the laws of physics) which The Creator has provisioned and which considerably enhances the conditional probability of crystals as a maximum entropy configuration. (Of course that's not to say that The Creator has actually contrived pre-conditions, if indeed such conditions are logically possible, which considerably enhance the conditional probability of the evolution of life as a maximum entropy configuration).

In conclusion: I would contradict what Granville states about the evolution of life defying the spirit of the second law..... if The Creator has provisioned suitable pre-conditions (if indeed such conditions are a mathematical possibility) then there is no defiance of the spirit of the second law; life would constitute a maximum entropy condition under the constraints supplied by The Creator. But of course whether The Creator has actually supplied such preconditions is the 64 trillion dollar question!

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GRANVILLE: The second law of thermodynamics — at least the underlying principle behind this law — simply says that natural forces do not cause extremely improbable things to happen, [Rubbish!] and it is absurd to argue that because the Earth receives energy from the Sun, this principle was not violated here when the original rearrangement of atoms into encyclopedias and computers occurred. (my emphases)

MY COMMENT: NAID thinking is shot through with the assumption that somehow the physics of our world falls into this mystical category called "natural forces" and therefore can be discounted as utterly "blind" and with no creative efficacy. The obvious snag with this proto-pagan view is that those "natural forces" are The Creators creation and therefore it does no justice to them to describe them as blind natural forces; if I was feeling ill tempered I might say that it is bordering on faithless blasphemy to refer to those laws as such. 

As a general rule it is blatantly false to claim that that natural forces do not cause extremely improbable things to happen, There is of course the simple case of crystallization which as we've seen is an entropy maximization process whose unconditional probability is all but zero - the unconditional probability of a crystal is like throwing a million heads in a row. I would hasten to grant, however, that highly organised crystal configurations are one thing but the configurations of life are quite another; but at this stage given the presence of huge Divine intellectual resources those providential so-called "natural forces" (sic) created by The Creator are a wild card and this means that as far as we are concerned, we are not yet at the stage where evolution can be categorically eliminated from the inquiry.    

To see what can be done with the right kind of information lets consider embryo growth. Restating equation 1.....

 I <= S + Log T

equation 1

Embryo growth starts with a large burden of implicit information S in the form of DNA strings and other cellular manufacturing paraphernalia (not to mention the laws of physics). Nevertheless a certain amount of time T is still needed to complete the development work as governed by the DNA recipes. The point, however, is this: The process of embryo development entails imposing high organization on large quantities of matter and yet at no stage is the 2nd law violated. In principle it is possible to construct a boundary of isolation round the embryo development system and include within that boundary all that embryo development is going to need in terms of the output/input of energy & matter and then make sure that nothing passes that boundary. We can then think in terms of an isolated boundaried system and forget about negentropy imports from the outside. What we do know is that in this isolated system overall entropy will increase, even though the miracle of embryo development entails imposing highly organized configurations on macroscopic quantities of matter; this is the miracle of cellular machinery, DNA and the laws of physics which together constitute the information in S.  The miracle here is that this system generates huge pockets of high organization and yet as a whole entropy increases; in short embryo growth is a entropy maximisation process. The other thing to note is that random diffusion plays a big part in assembling the necessary molecular configurations......The initial molecular machinery represented by S has the effect of locking-in diffused matter and energy into the growing molecular configurations. It achieves this with what is in effect a trial-&-error search facilitated by the thermal agitations of random walk. Thus S entails a mathematical constraint which biases the random agitations of random walk and it does this by selecting only those molecular unions which fit the templates implicit in S.

Of course this observation is no proof that bog-standard evolution is actually the real-life mechanism of natural history but it does set up a challenging precedent for intelligence-of-gaps thought and the NAID community who have put all their eggs into the anti-evolution basket. For if (repeat, if) evolution has occurred as we understand it, it shares with embryo growth a similar balance of S and T.... If standard evolution is to work without the help of expanding parallelism the cosmic value of S must be large enough to develop what are in fact highly complex living configurations given that the cosmos is in effect only a parallel processor operating for time T; the huge unconditional improbability of living configurations means that the visible dimensions of cosmic time and space, though they seem enormous to us, are no match for life's immense unconditional improbability. 

Well OK that's no proof of standard evolution, but let me stress again that the weakness of NAID is that it has put all its eggs into the anti-evolution basket, which means the NAID community is tribally committed to a single cause; namely, agitating against a hostile academia's evolutionary consensus. NAID's riposte to academia is that evolution just can't happen because it relies on "blind natural forces" (sic) ...but what a pagan way to describe the providences of God's creation!

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GRANVILLE: In a 2000 Mathematical Intelligencer article2 I claimed that The second law of thermodynamics — at least the underlying principle behind this law — simply says that natural forces do not cause extremely improbable things to happen, and it is absurd to argue that because the Earth receives energy from the Sun, this principle was not violated here when the original rearrangement of atoms into encyclopedias and computers occurred.

One reader noted in a published reply to my article that any particular long string of coin tosses is extremely improbable, so my statement that “natural forces do not cause extremely improbable things to happen” is not correct. This critic was right, and I have since been careful to state (for example in a 2013 BIO-Complexity article4) that the underlying principle behind the second law is that Natural (unintelligent) forces do not do macroscopically describable things that are extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view. (My emphases)

MY COMMENT: Granville goes on to define macroscopically describable things in terms of algorithmic information theory... content I certainly wouldn't dispute! In short macroscopically describable things are highly organized configurations of billions of atoms, where this particulate organization is such that it allows algorithmic data compression to take place (See this link and my work on Disorder and Randomness). So, I was pleased to find Granville talking some sense at last. But that pleasure was offset by the statements I've emphasized in the quote above where he "blasphemously" (!?) refers to God's providences as blind and unintelligent natural forces (*Gasp!*).  And yet we know that given the right kind of S and T those "blind forces" (sic) can create highly organised macroscopic configurations in the form of embryos & crystals and yet at the same time without violation of the 2nd law.  Of course I'd accept that it's too much of a stretch to automatically extrapolate this to evolution; but if evolution as we understand it has occurred it displays a similar balance of S and T as I've already remarked. 

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GRANVILLE: This principle is very similar to William Dembski’s observation that you can identify intelligent agents because they are the only ones that can do things that are “specified” (simply or macroscopically describable) and “complex” (extremely improbable) [That's the first time I've seen a clear cut definition of  so-called "specified complexity" a term bandied about by the NAID rank and file is if they know what they are talking about]. Any box full of wires and metal scraps could be said to be complex, but we only suspect intelligence has organized them if the box performs a complex and specifiable function, such as “playing DVDs.”

MY COMMENT: A nice slap on the back there for William Dembski from fellow NAID Granville! Yes, I too would  acknowledge that the incredible feats of macroscopic organization, in particular the mathematically elegant laws of physics, are very intuitively compelling re. intelligent design. My theological intuitions that this points to Divine providence are as strong as any. The alternative of a fluky random universe are, as Sherlock Holmes observed in the story of The Cardboard Box, unthinkable (See the introduction to Disorder and Randomness). The work of Divine providence is even more compelling when one sees the botched job that arrogant atheist Richard Carrier has done in trying to explain it all in terms of randomness. Further intuitive compulsion is added when we see how nice-boy atheist Brian Cox offers his thoughts on his Godless empty vision of cosmic destiny: Viz:

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.

But what I bulk at with NAIDs like Granville is that they will have a real headache on their hands if it it ever turns out that physics is logically complete: That is, that it's algorithmic descriptions not only cover basic physical phenomena but also the evolution of life and moreover the workings of the human brain. They would then have no small-time gaps for their intelligence-of-the-gaps plug-ins to get a purchase on.

Nevertheless I must add the caveat that I'm not committed to the notion of the logical completeness of the laws of physics, but neither am I committed to a denial of that completeness. Unlike Brian Cox and the NAIDs I'm not going to put all my theoretical eggs into one basket. But for me there remains some very basic intuitions... theological intuitions expressed in the likes of Psalm 8, Psalm 19 and Psalm 139....... 

When I consider your heavens,

    the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

    which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

    human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8)

 

The heavens declare the glory of God;

    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

    night after night they reveal knowledge.

They have no speech, they use no words;

    no sound is heard from them.

Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,

    their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19)

For you created my inmost being;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

    your works are wonderful,

    I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you

    when I was made in the secret place,

    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

    all the days ordained for me were written in your book

    before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

    How vast is the sum of them!

Were I to count them,

    they would outnumber the grains of sand –

    when I awake, I am still with you. (Psalm 119)

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The perennial fault of the NAID community is that they don't acknowledge that the theology of a totalizing & transcendent Omnigod creator leads one to a very different form of theological logic to that of the explanatory filter which only caters for in-house created intelligences like humans, animals and little green men.  But I would acknowledge that the NAID community do have mitigating circumstances: In the highly polarized political environment of the US some of the academic community have treated NAID theorists like an unclean plague. As I've remarked before this has pushed the NAID community into the embracing arms of some very vicious right-wing idealists; like Donald Trump for instance.

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In the next episode I will have a look at Granville's open system reasoning where he considers the transport of negentropy across an open boundary and doubts that this explains increasing configurational order - not the way I would do it personally as I prefer the closed system approach that I've used above; but lets see what he has to say....

...to be continued.

Footnotes

*1 It needs to be pointed out here that whatever the logical and empirical status of standard evolutionary mechanisms some people may have overriding theological issues with evolution which makes it impossible for them to accept. 

*2 But it is likely I would not be a good fit for the so-called "libertarian" political ideology and conspiracy theorism which pervades the NAID community: Recall types like Charlie Kirk.  This is ironic as I've always thought of myself as a free-market-loving liberal minded constitutional monarchist. But polarization has so set-in that I probably look like a raving communist to the Trumpite/Kirkist/Randist/Faragist/Hamite far-right and a capitalist running dog to the Marxist far-left!

*3 The NAID community continue in the affectation that their thesis about intelligent design is not a theological one but a scientific one and therefore their concept of "intelligent agency" masquerades as a purely scientific concept that can be tested for in scientific ways. This is certainly true if we are dealing with the agency of humans, animals or aliens who work within the implicit information (S) of the physical world. But if we move over to the agency of an Omnigod the question of intelligent agency becomes much more tricky, theological and intuitive. This is a consequence of the transcendent Christian Omnigod being both eminent and immanent to creation (Acts 17:28).  So in principle one might think that the NAID community is a broad church that opens it's doors to anyone who accepts their thesis of non-transcendent intelligent agency, but somehow I doubt that's the case. I suspect that even someone like myself would be persona non grata to the NAID tribe. 

*4 See these links:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Darwin Bicentenary Part 11: William Demski’s Active Information

Quantum Non-Linearity: Darwin Bicentenary 14: Active Information and Evolution

Quantum Non-Linearity: Darwin Bicentenary Part 19: Dembski's Active Information Continued...

ADDENDUM 30/06/2026

A rather politically sinister post has appeared on Science & Culture by Granville Sewell. Viz:

On the Road: The Science of Design in an American Context | Science and Culture Today

In this article Granville gives credit to the virtues of the American Declaration of Independence but without mention of important contexts: Viz:

1. The role of the English Civil war in giving historical rhetoric to the American cause. One could go even further back to the ground work of the Provisions of Oxford and the Magna Carta. Also the input of the European Enlightenment and the English industrial revolution need consideration.

2. The current US context of the democratic backsliding of the MAGArite movement and the banana republic style rule of the pathological narcissist D J Trump. The "stolen election" of 2020 were Trump lies supported by the likes of Mike Pompeo.

Let's also beware of the hazard of both "Christian" internationalism and nationalism: Christendom under the Popes was oppressive; ask Wycliffe and Tyndale. English Christian nationalism under the Stuart destiny was highly oppressive for Non-conformists until William of Orange (1688) and the eventual repeal of the Test Act in 1828. Catholics were also oppressed by over fervent English Christian nationalism. And while we are here let me mention a certain Mr. V Putin whose version of Christian nationalism might have some appeal for MAGArites such as Steve Bannon & Stephen Miller. Let's also beware of too idealistic interpretations of Adam Smith, interpretations which for the Western Irish subsistence farmers of the 19th century only exacerbated their terrible suffering. 

The Boston Tea Party and the American revolution were not some super-duper Christian revolution emerging from no-where; it had background - a lot of background in Europe. 

Granville is not only silent about the above contexts but also about the corrupt Christian nationalism of MAGArism and Trump. He is therefore in my view complicit. It may well be that as with someone like Ken Ham the interests of NAID are being quietly served by MAGArism and vice versa.

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 all information is lost and it is impossible to reverse the clock any further back. 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. Contra-wise, 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 which impose 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 or not the cosmos had an absolute beginning. Why do theists put so much investment in absolute beginnings and why do atheist seek to theoretically overthrow absolute origins 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 sentient 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 a cosmos with 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 demonstrating the logical necessity of the observed cosmos. See Carrier, R for a failed attempt to generate an organized cosmos from probability theory.