Naive Intelligent Design: Part III

(This post is still undergoing correction and enhancement)

The NAID community hold an a-priori anti-evolutionary position. 
Their subliminally deist concept of "natural forces" connives with
this view.

What started as a single post has now become a four-part series with the fourth part to come. The two previous parts of this series can be found here:

Part 1: Quantum Non-Linearity: Casey Luskin Promotes a Flawed XOR Epistemic Filter (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

Part2: Quantum Non-Linearity: Logging Some Notes on Naive Intelligent Design Theory (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

As we saw in Part I the North American ID community (NAID) have painted themselves into a corner that has committed them to defending a Dawkinesque philosophy of evolution: Namely, that evolution and intelligent creation are mutually incompatible. Evolution, they'll try to tell us, makes no claim to using intelligent design and creative input; therefore, to be an evolutionist in their view is an attempt to do away with the necessity of intelligent input. 

In the dualist paradigm of the NAID community there is a clear XOR choice between so called "natural forces" and the artificial forces of intelligence. This dichotomy does work if we are dealing with agencies, sentient or not, that work within the created or "natural" order: Viz: When we come across a material configuration of some sort, such as an object of archeological interest, a signal from Outerspace, or an Unidentified Ariel Phenomenon, it is a meaningful question to ask whether we looking at an outcome of the physical regime and generated "naturally" or whether it is the work of one of those natural intelligences that are actually an aspect of the physical regime: e.g.  humans, intelligent apes, elephants, birds, little gray men from Zeta Reticuli or even Greek sub-deities; these intelligences are "natural" in so far as they are cosmically in-house; that is, they are material objects. In this context the natural physical regime and natural intelligence are regarded as distinct causative agents and it makes sense to see a material configuration as the outcome of either purely natural forces or having input from natural intelligence. Here the NAID epistemic filter works after a fashion.

Given the foregoing scenario it is meaningful to declare that if a configuration is generated purely by the physical regime, this therefore excludes the involvement of natural intelligences.  Moreover, those unintelligent "natural forces" are seen as autonomous generators of configurations, albeit innovationally inferior to the creative potential of natural intelligent agents. If the physical regime is going to generate configurations more startling than say crystals, layers of rock, or random noise or rhythmic pulses from the stars, it is going to need at least a little help from those natural intelligences which reside within the natural order such as humans, apes or little grey men. In this context it makes sense to ask the question "Did natural forces do it, or was intelligence involved?". This dichotomy brings to the fore the current conundrum which surrounds the question of organic forms; they are clearly more sophisticated that anything human beings can construct and, apparently, far, far more sophisticated than anything we directly observe nature constructing. Therefore, according to Naive Intelligent Design life must be evidence of intelligent agency. But in drawing this conclusion the distinctiveness of the natural intelligence category is not given cognizance by C&S.

As we have seen and will continue to see in this post, the foregoing is the epistemic paradigm NAID culture has locked itself into, and ironically it is also the paradigm of those committed to exclusive secularism such as Richard Dawkins. In the Dawkinesque world it makes sense to put all one's philosophical eggs into the "naturalist" basket of evolution because it can then be declared that "The creation of life is a natural phenomenon that hasn't had intelligent help". And ironically this is also how the NAIDs think of evolution except that they believe that without "intelligent help" evolution is not up to the task of generating living configurations. Consequently, NAID philosophers are committed to minimizing the life generating powers of evolution whereas Dawkinesque philosophers are committed to maximizing the constructive efficacy of evolution.

But as it turns this polarized paradigm is shoddy theology and falls over badly in the context of Christain theism. 

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In this post I will be critiquing the following post by Casey Luskin and Stephen Dilley:

Evolution Falsified? Rope Kojonen’s Achievement | Evolution News

As will become increasingly clear they are using a secularist paradigm that only makes sense in the context of natural intelligence. 

 ***

CASEY & STEPHEN: If mainstream evolutionary theory can account for the eye of an eagle, does it make any sense to say that intelligent design is also needed?  

MY COMMENT:  Yes and no! "No" if you are thinking of natural intelligence and potentially "yes" if you are thinking of transcendent divine intelligence, as we will see....

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C&S: The heart of Kojonen’s book is an attempt to reinvigorate a biology-based design argument that is compatible with mainstream evolutionary theory. That is, he accepts evolutionary explanations of the rise of flora and fauna, yet he also argues that this same flora and fauna provides empirical evidence of intelligent design. At first blush, this sounds like a violation of Ockham’s razor. If natural selection and random mutation are up to the task, what ground is there to say that an intelligent agent is also needed?

MY COMMENT:  The reason why C&S think Kojonen has violated Ockham's razor is because they are unable to mentally free themselves from the ID vs Natural Forces dualism forced on them by their flawed epistemic filter. As a consequence, they have superimposed an either/or choice on the question of whether evolution is sourced in natural forces or intelligent agency. In their eyes, one must choose one or the other or else be accused of multiplying entities contrary to Occam's razor. The subtlety they haven't spotted is that their epistemic filter has encrypted into it the subliminal assumption that the kind of intelligence this filter deals with is always a natural intelligence. 

***

C&S (my emphases): Kojonen believes that his particular conception of design rises to the challenge. He argues that design helps evolution succeed. In this collaborative model, God directly designed the laws of nature, which in turn gave rise to special preconditions that enabled evolution to produce biological form and function. As we explain in our article:

In chapter four, Kojonen marshals various arguments to show that the preconditions of evolution must be designed if evolution is to be successful (as he believes it to be). The deck must be stacked in advance. In particular, fitness landscapes must be finely tuned ahead of time in order for evolutionary processes to successfully produce biological complexity and diversity. Kojonen believes that it is implausible to think that evolutionary processes can account for flora and fauna without these special preconditions. To make his case, Kojonen cites the work of Andreas Wagner, William Dembski, and others on protein evolution, evolutionary algorithms, structuralism, and the like. For Kojonen, these thinkers’ arguments powerfully show that evolutionary processes need prior “fine-tuning” of fitness landscapes (Kojonen 2021, pp. 97-143, esp. pp. 109-23). Thus, “evolution and design” is superior to “evolution alone.” 

MY COMMENT:  As we will see in Part IV Kojonen isn't saying anything startingly new. Therefore, to say "Kojonen believes that his particular conception of design rises to the challenge" is grossly inappropriate. As we will see we cannot imagine evolution being anything other than how Kojonen describes it as a process that necessarily exploits a smooth well-tuned "fitness landscape".  It beats me why C&S are so startled by Kojonen's very unoriginal claim.

And yet it is clear from the above that C&S are actually attempting to frame their deliberations within the context of a transcendent divine intelligence as opposed to natural intelligence: Viz: "God directly designed the laws of nature". So, as we shall see in due course their epistemic paradigm crashes ignominiously because it is unable to handle transcendent intelligence: When it comes to a transcendent Christian deity it makes no sense to talk of a collaborative model. Once again, we see the NAIDs epistemic filter forcing on the debate a paradigm that is only meaningful when dealing with natural intelligences; given natural intelligences it is meaningful to say that these intelligences collaborate with nature when creating artifacts. 

Actually, in spite of my reservations I can agree with the general drift of the quote above. After all, as I have said in my previous post, if the probability of life forming in a very finite universe is to be significant it must be a conditional probability: Viz:

Conditional probability of life ~ significant = Prob(Organic configurations, right conditions)

That is, life has all but no chance of forming unconditionally given the nature of naked randomness: It can only form if the randomness is "dressed" with the right conditions, usually expressed as mathematical constraints (i.e. laws governing the physical regime) putting a tight envelop on the dance of randomness. Naturally, being a Christian theist there is only One Power I can think of capable of that. In fact, we hear about that Power in the quote above. Again: "God directly designed the laws of nature"! ...this suggests that C&S are in actual fact attempting to frame the question of evolution in the context of Christian theism but they fail to see that this throws a whole new complexion on intelligent design as we shall see. 

But although I largely agree with the above quote C&S betray at least two subtle flaws in their thinking....

ONE:  They refer to "pre-conditions" and "prior fine tuning, done ahead of time" and God "designed the laws of nature". The thinking expressed here about past-tense pre-preparation of the cosmos looks like subliminal deism; deism is also a feature of proto-secularism. In deism God sets up the necessary conditions in advance and then lets the cosmos dance its dance while He stands back. And yet the constraints of the physical regime (i.e. its laws) are a presence-tense-continuous influence on the ongoing patterns that the cosmos generates; those constraints are there as transcendent pattern controllers everywhere and everywhen, justified by no apparent logic which can wipe away the utter surprisal (i.e. the information content) of their contingency. Recycling old well-known phraseology, it might be said that natural law is daily and hourly scrutinizing & controlling events throughout the world. Let's also recall the sophistication of randomness itself; randomness is the absence of any succinct mathematical rule which might describe it or constrain it. In its ideal state randomness is incomputable. All this sounds suspiciously like the ongoing input of a very competent exocosmic agent, whether sentient or not.

I have to confess that when talking about the necessary conditions for a working model of evolution I might have once expressed myself by talking about preconditions and the physical regime being "front loaded" with information, but I now see this as a deistic error; those contingent constraints on the patterns of the physical regime are ever present and ever working; everywhere and everywhen. 

TWO:  NAID pundits use terms like "Thus, “evolution and design” is superior to “evolution alone.” without embarrassment because they conceive evolution to be distinct from intelligence agency. Well, as we have seen that's OK if we are dealing with humans, aliens or sub-deities like Greek gods. But if we are dealing with the immanent Judeo-Christain God the implicit categories here underlying NAID culture's natural forces vs intelligence paradigm fail: For if standard evolution has occurred (caution: I'm not committed to saying it has) it is necessarily the subject of both present-tense continuous mathematical constraints and the event surprisal of randomness; for a Christian theist such a process would clearly require the ongoing immanent input from the One and Only Transcendent Sovereign. In this conceptual context “evolution alone” is unthinkable.

Is it possible that C&S are simply repeating Kojonen's own deistical terms which then provides them with enough rope to hang Kojonen. I can't speak for Kojonen on this score as I haven't read his book. But I can criticize C&S for adopting a proto-secularist deistical philosophy for themselves as the basis for critiquing evolution; for as soon as you admit the existence of an imminent Judeo-Christian Deity, the possibility of the existence of the strict mathematical constraints supporting an efficacious evolution then looms on the horizon.

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C&S: This is a keyway that “design” adds value to “evolution.” Yet is there empirical evidence that these fine-tuned preconditions and landscapes exist? If so, then there are good grounds for Kojonen’s particular conception of design. If not, then his view of design falls short. As we explain:

Kojonen situates design precisely in those fine-tuned preconditions which yield smooth fitness landscapes that allow evolution to succeed. His case for marrying design with evolution therefore depends on the existence of this fine-tuning. So, it is crucial to assess whether this fine-tuning is real. And this question can be assessed scientifically: are fitness landscapes smooth? Are there open pathways between functional proteins, for example? Or are there impassible barriers between such proteins?

Alas, this is where the dike breaks. As we show in our article — and in previous posts — there is no good evidence for fine-tuned preconditions and smooth fitness landscapes (as Kojonen envisions them). Indeed, there is extremely strong evidence against such things.

MY COMMENT:  At last C&S are actually making some good coherent sense here and I might (or might not!) agree with them (apart from quibbling their use of the term preconditions). As I said in Part I and many times before, standard evolution depends on the existence of what I call the spongeam, a structure of thin fibrils in configuration space which join the complex ordered configurations of survivable organic structures into a connected set thus facilitating the transport of probability via the diffusion equation through to those complex ordered configurations we call life. But along with NAID culture I would want to raise a plausible question as to whether such "smooth landscapes" actually exist in configuration space given the known cosmic physical regime. But on this question there is one big difference between myself and NAID culture: NAID culture has burnt its boats, and its mutual back-slapping groupthink has lead it to assert with confidence "There is extremely strong evidence against such things." Well, true there may be evidence against such things but is it extremely strong? I'm not so sure; for am I to believe that all those scientists (and that includes Christian scientists) who claim there is empirical evidence for evolution are in a conspiracy to ignore what NAID culture claims is strong evidence for the absence of those "smooth landscapes"?  The question sounds moot & debatable to me.

So, in conclusion... From my point of view, I can allow that NAID culture does have a prima facia case here, but as I'm not a biologist and don't have sufficient grasp on the empirical data I therefore have to admit I can't speak intelligently on this question. However, I must stress I have no commitment to the groupthink of either side. 

Be that as it may C&S have at least admitted that a physical regime fine-tuned enough for the spongeam to be an ongoing controlling envelope is a sign of intelligent agency, presumably a transcendent intelligent creator: Viz:

"Yet is there empirical evidence that these fine-tuned preconditions and landscapes exist?If so, then there are good grounds for Kojonen’s particular conception of design."

Whether or not this is the case swings on whether or not the spongeam exists; perhaps it doesn't! In which case organic forms are irreducibly complex with their working components isolated on islands of functionality. As I've said before, discovering whether or not organic structures are irreducibly complex may be a computationally irreducible question; that is, we may be looking at a computation that has no short cut analytical answer and can only be answered by an actual "long hand" evolutionary experiment.  

But in spite of the absence of easy analytical answers about whether evolution is feasible, it is an axiomatic part of NAID groupthink to assert the irreducible complexity of organic structures; it has therefore become a culturally irreversible choice for them.  Consequently, in the face of a seemingly irresolvable and acrimonious empirical debate with the evolutionary establishment about irreducible complexity, NAID culture is casting around for stronger logical grounds for eliminating evolution from the debate. Cue, their precarious crypto-deistic epistemology.......

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C&S:Kojonen’s model may have devastating implications for mainstream evolutionary theory. Recall that the heart of his proposal is that evolution needs design (in the form of fine-tuned preconditions). Evolution on its own is insufficient to produce flora and fauna. But if we are correct that Kojonen’s conception and justification of design are flawed, then it follows — by his own lights — that evolution is impotent to explain biological complexity. Kojonen’s own account of the efficacy of evolution depends upon the success of his case for design. But if the latter stumbles, then so does the former. In a startling way, Kojonen has set the table for the rejection of evolution. If he has failed to make his case for design, then he has left readers with strong reasons to abandon mainstream evolutionary theory. The full implications of this striking result warrant further exploration.

Kojonen’s model provides yet another significant reason to reject evolutionary theory. Of course, the general falsity of evolution is not the focus of the argument in our paper per se; it is nonetheless a direct implication of the failure of Kojonen’s model. Readers who take his case seriously will realize that he has given a beautiful account of how to falsify evolutionary theory. Kojonen mounts a sophisticated argument — based on evolutionary algorithms, convergence, structuralism, and the like — that evolution is impotent on its own to explain biological complexity. It requires design. If he is correct, then evolution cannot succeed without design. And if we are correct, there is no such design. The inescapable conclusion is that evolution does not succeed.

MY COMMENT:  The hidden logic underlying the above argument is based on NAID's flawed epistemic filter which forces a choice between intelligent design and natural forces (See my initial preamble above and Part I).  In the NAID paradigm intelligent agency and natural forces are two mutually excluding categories and one must choose one or the other, just as one must choose between, for example, aliens or a natural radio emission when doing SETI. 

It is the NAID category system which enables one to conceive that there is such an object as "Evolution on its own"; that is, as a process unaided by (natural) intelligent interference. So, in the NAID universe of conceptions Kojonen is mixing the two categories of intelligent agency and natural forces in order to give evolution a little help from intelligence to bump it off the bottom of otherwise natural inefficacy.  C&S are trying to get past us the incoherent notion that Kojonen's thesis is tantamount to admitting that "Evolution on its own is insufficient" as a life creator and therefore the alternative is that it is an admixture of intelligence and natural forces.  But according to C&S this dual explanation of evolution violates Occam's razor. 

Moreover, C&S see this as a backdoor clincher in favor of their thesis: Kojonen in admitting evolution's need for intelligent help has, according to C&S, admitted its inefficacy in creating sophisticated configurations such as organic structures without that help.  Therefore, if evolution shows no evidence of those design nudges which might be the work of a sub-deity or alien intelligence then Kojonen is effectively telling us that evolution ("alone") doesn't work. In fact, as C&S are fast to point out Dawkinesque secularists "reject design precisely because they think evolutionary processes are fully sufficient"

Let me repeat all that in slightly different words: According to C&S (and also Dawkinesque thinking) evolution is supposed to work without design; that is, without the input of the ad hoc tinkering by some sub-deity or super-alien giving it a nudge or two to get it moving in the right direction. So, if you believe that evolution needs the designs of fine-tuning to work, this is tantamount to admitting that without a lot of intelligent tinkering evolution as a natural process doesn't work.

Well, the foregoing is the logic of NAive Intelligent Design. As I have already said this logic is bad theology in that it actually employs in a form of crypto-deism. This follows because one is being asked by NAID thinkers to conceive a category of so-called natural forces that are able to operate autonomously as configuration generators, if only with the potential to generate relatively elementary configurations. In the NAID paradigm these "natural forces" are deemed "blind and unintelligent".  But this NAID category only makes coherent sense if it is being contrasted against natural intelligent designers who work within the confines of the created order and are part of it, such as humans, apes, aliens and classical sub-deities - it doesn't work in the context of the transcendent, immanent God of Christianity who creates not just at the beginning of time, but whose creative power is an ongoing present-tense-continuous power controlling and creating the patterns of cosmic behaviour. 

 Assuming that C&S are rightly representing Kojonen's views, then according to C&S Kojonen is telling us that evolution needs to be supplemented with the kind of fine-tuning that entails smooth "fitness landscapes" in configuration space.  But as we shall see such fine-tuning isn't a mere supplement but is in fact part and parcel with the very description of evolution and cannot be divorced from it. Least of all does Kojonen's work count as a new radical and startling departure as C&S seem to (wrongly) think it is. Kojonen's contribution is something we already know to be a minimum requirement of a working evolutionary model, in fact part of its very definition. 

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C&S: We bring our long series to a close on a note of current relevance to the ID community. As members of this community know, some thinkers actively call for advocates of ID to accept only versions of design that are compatible with mainstream evolutionary theory. They believe that ID will only stand a chance of success if it accepts conventional thinking. Naturally, advocates of this view may be tempted to see Kojonen’s model as an ally in their quest.

MY COMMENT:  I'd accept the underlying point here: It is not a good strategy to bully the NAID community into accepting mainstream evolutionary theory. To do so has only had the effect of pushing the NAID community into the embrace of the far-right evangelicals & Trumpites. As I have said in Part 1 of this series the existence of the spongeam (i.e. "reducible complexity") can be challenged and the NAID community do have a reasonable and even plausible case here. In fact it is a good thing to have such anti-evolution critics on the sidelines challenging the evolutionary establishment to come up with solutions to those apparent gaps in what they think to be smooth evolutionary change. And yet C&S tell us above that the general falsity of evolution is not the focus of the argument in our paper per se. That is, in this instance C&S are not focusing on this constructive challenge to evolution. Instead, they have foolishly followed an epistemic willow-the-wisp which uses the bad theology of their "natural forces vs sub-deity" paradigm.  

May I repeat: Personally, I have no vested interest staked in either the truth or falsity of standard evolution: I'm not a biologist and so I don't have at my fingertips the empirical evidence to decide on a question about the reality or otherwise of what may in fact be a computationally irreducible process. What I do know is that the NAID epistemic paradigm is flawed through and through and they should scrap it and spend more time backing their argument for their empirical theory of irreducible complexity.

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C&S: But the reality is quite different. Kojonen’s argument is that mainstream evolution on its own is insufficient to explain biological complexity. Hence, he argues that designed laws and preconditions are needed. His claim about the impotence of evolutionary theory is hardly the received view among evolutionary biologists. [That is, Dawkinite thinkers and not Biologos!] (At least, this is true in their public-facing statements; in private, one sometimes hears great cause for concern.) Indeed, many evolutionary biologists say they reject design precisely because they think evolutionary processes are fully sufficient. [Again, Dawkinite thinkers and not Biologos!] Why else would they accept the theory? So, even when Kojonen’s model is taken on its own terms, it runs against the grain of mainstream evolutionary thought. Thinkers who petition the ID movement to accept evolutionary theory and who see Kojonen’s model as an aid to their cause have not understood the actual contours of the debate. Kojonen’s model is no ally of accommodationist versions of intelligent design.

Moreover, if our criticisms of Kojonen’s model are correct, then he has, in effect, falsified mainstream evolutionary theory. Far from bringing people into the evolutionary fold, Kojonen has done science (and ID) a great service by showing them why they should pursue a richer, more thoughtful path.

MY COMMENT: The deistical idea that there is such a thing as "Evolution on its own" is a notion one hears from Dawkinesque thinkers who want to become intellectually satisfied atheists. One also hears it from NAIDs (and Kojonen?) who think the notion is coherent enough for them to attempt to prove "mainstream evolution on its own is insufficient to explain biological complexity". And when we read above that "many evolutionary biologists say they reject design precisely because they think evolutionary processes are fully sufficient" that only makes sense in the context of "Dawkinesque" deism, a philosophy which is also subliminally shared by NAID crypto-deism: Viz: that "natural processes" have an autonomy as a causal agent and stand in distinction from intelligent agency.  But to make this distinction both NAID pundits and Dawkinesque atheists are subliminally contrasting natural processes with natural cosmic in-house intelligent agents like aliens or human. Such natural intelligent agents are distinct from "natural forces" and provide an alternative explanation when those natural forces seem unable to account for a material configuration.  But all that goes out of the window if we admit Christianity's transcendent & immanent theism. 

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As we will see in Part IV Kojonen is actually saying nothing really original or new, for by the very definition of a working model of standard evolution it must exploit an a-priori spongeam (what some call a smooth "fitness landscape"). Consequently, conventional evolution, as properly understood, can never be anything other than a highly sophisticated information rich process, the depository of huge contingent dependencies.  What Kojonen is saying isn't in error except that according to C&S's account of his argument (and, true, they may be misrepresenting him) for some reason Kojonen appears to have divorced evolution from its own definition and even goes as far as making a "claim about the impotence of evolutionary theory". Therefore, according to C&S Kojonen has actually, "in effect, falsified mainstream evolutionary theory". On the contrary Kojonen has simply stated the conditions that we know must hold if evolution is to be a working model.

As we shall also see, if one is so minded, even the existence of a conveniently smooth fitness landscape facilitating evolution isn't necessarily enough to trigger an "it must be intelligent design" response. But the Christian who isn't befuddled by Naive ID's bad theology will find standard evolution to be such an astonishingly sophisticated process (i.e. of huge surprisal value) that it provides plenty of grist to the mill for the design hunter.  

Logging Some Notes on Naive Intelligent Design Theory. Part II

The logic of NAive ID's epistemology: "I can't see any intelligent agency here: Therefore, I conclude that cars are created by
natural processes.". It's ironic that the NAive IDists and Dawkinites would agree on this point!
(Picture from: Photo & Art Print robot assembly line in car factory (ukposters.co.uk))

This current post picks up on some matters arising from my last post on Casey Luskin's take on Intelligent Design and Evolution. 

***

ONE) Here we go again:  The group think momentum of NAive ID continues in this post on Evolution News:

Can Evolution and Design Work in Harmony? | Evolution News

Namely....

But if the design can be explained through natural processes, there is little need to invoke intelligent design. After all, the whole point of mainstream evolutionary theory is to render any need for design superfluous.

Dr. Dilley also explains why Kojonen’s model contradicts our natural intuition to detect design. If we look at a hummingbird under Kojonen’s proposal, we are still required to see unguided natural processes at work, the appearance of design without actual intelligent design. Yet we are also supposed to acknowledge that an intelligent designer front-loaded the evolutionary process with the creative power it needs to produce the hummingbird. So is it intelligently designed, or isn’t it? The theist on the street is left scratching his or her head.

Yes, the so-called theist-on-the-street is left scratching their heads and these theists are none other than the North American Intelligent Design community. It ought to be quite clear to any sufficiently educated theist that a physical regime capable of generating life could only come out of the workings of an all but omniscient mind. The NAIDs are educated but they have painted themselves into a group-think corner which commits their sub-culture to an erroneous XOR epistemic filter, imposing a straight ID vs Natural forces binary choice on the subject. Along with Dawkinesque atheists they have wrongly equated evolution with a form of deism; it is a very short step from deism to the complete elimination of deity.

See also the following: The error of the title speaks for itself. It is clear that the NAIDs who write this sort of stuff have absolutely no inkling that they are merely scratching the surface of the subject:

The Incompatibility of Evolution and Design | Evolution News

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TWO) Rate of creation of information.  The following pertains to mathematical work I have done and continue to do...

An error propagated in both NAID culture and among Christian Young Earthists is that God's physical regime can't generate information. This is untrue.....

Firstly, let's start with this simple equation:

Unconditional probability of life = Prob (Organic configuration)

The highly organized yet highly complex configurations of life are such a small statistical class in the immense sea of randomness that the probability of organized complexity arising by naked chance can be neglected even given the immense number of trials supplied by a universe billions of years old and billions of light years across. The dimensions of space-time, even if measured in billions, doesn't even scratch the surface of unconditional probabilities so deeply negatively logarithmic that one has to get past billions of zero digits to the right of the decimal point before one hits non-zero digits. Hence, the probability of life being generated can only be significant if the right pre-conditions exist. That is:

Conditional probability of life ~ significant = Prob(Organic configuration, right conditions)

What we are asking for here is that given the right generating conditions life could be generated in a reasonable number of trials because each trial has an enhanced probability of generating life by virtue of the physical regime embodied in those right conditions. 

These trials have the effect of generating negative Shannon Information. The reason for this negativity is that if life should form as a result of the conditions which enhance its probability, then it has passed from a platonic possibility into the created world; life is then a known fact and the information is now reified and exists in the real world. 

As I have shown elsewhere this shift in the information from the platonic world of possibility to the real world occurs at a no greater rate than is implied by:

I = S + log(T)

Where I is the information content of a configuration, S is the minimum length of the algorithm needed to generate the configuration with a minimum number of execution steps of T.

I give a derivation of this mathematical form in two papers that can accessed from here and here. I have subsequently been working on a more sophisticated version of this expression and will publish this work in due course. 

The thing to note is that information can in principle be created by a physical regime: But if that physical regime is a parallel processor, this information is only created very slowly with the logarithm of time T.  Hence, the contention one hears from fundamentalists and NAIDs that physical processes can't create information is false, mislead as they are by the slow logarithmic production of information in parallel processing mode. It becomes manifestly false if parallel processing is superseded by the exponentials of expanding parallelism; cue quantum theory....

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THREE):  The second law of thermodynamics and the diffusion equation. Assuming that configuration space has at least some regions in it crossed by the thin fibrils of the spongeam then as the diffusion in configuration space expands there is a chance that this expansion reaches the life creating regions in that space. Thus, although in these regions of configuration space organization is increasing this may well be offset by regions in configuration space, unconstrained by the spongeam where disorder is most definitely increasing thus more than cancelling the increase in order elsewhere; this looks to be the status quo in our cosmos where overall entropy is always increasing. Thus, it doesn't follow that the emergence of life necessarily violates the second law of thermodynamics.  One Biblical literalist looks to have twigged this fact. 

The diffusion equation below opens up the possibility of many scenarios where local order increases but overall order decreases......

See here for more on this equation. The spongeam can be patched in across configuration space with the factor V. This factor is a function of the coordinates in configuration space. 

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The above thoughts, which I don't push with any political gusto or over-motivated group-commitment, will naturally set me at odds with NAID culture which identifies too strongly with unwoke group think. I advance these concepts as an area of personal exploration uncommitted as I am to either the tribes of the woke or unwoke. 

Casey Luskin Promotes a Flawed XOR Epistemic Filter. Part I

The eager faced "theist-in-the-Street", 
Casey Luskin, perpetuates the usual
muddled NAID ideas about
design detection, intelligence, 
creation and theism

The North American Intelligent Design (NAID) community have some very incoherent habits of mind which thoroughly muddy the waters of Intelligent Design theory. NAID pundit Casey Luskin is no exception and in an article on "Evolution News" he perpetuates NAID's conceptual incoherence.   

Like so many other pundits in the NAID community whom I have criticized over the years Casey assumes from the start that he can impose on the subject a natural forces vs intelligent design dichotomy.  Well, that dichotomy does work reasonably if one is trying to detect the activity of intelligent beings who are part of the created order such as human beings, aliens sending SETI signals, little gray men from Zeti Reticuli or even intelligent earth animals. But as I have said so often in this blog this dichotomy falls over badly when it is applied to Christian theism where omniscient divine intelligence not only transcends the world it has created but is so totalizing that it somehow also permeates every part of it (See Acts 17:28). Moreover, the Christian God is an omnipotent and omniscient sovereign which means that nothing happens in the cosmos without His permission; that is, everything is subject to His power of veto. In someways God's relationship with His creation has parallels with that of an author who sustains and maintains the content of his story inside his/her mind. 

Christian theism throws a huge spanner into works of the simplistic "natural forces vs Intelligent design" dichotomy taken for granted by many IDists. After criticizing NAID dualism for so many years on this blog it is amusing to see them still perpetuating their old, hackneyed thought forms. The source of much of their grief, if not all of it, traces back to their so-called "explanatory filter" (See here where I criticised this simplistic epistemic).  The result is that Casey's arguments, along with that of his colleagues are incoherent. This doesn't mean to say that standard evolutionary theory holds good, but I don't have confidence in the NAID's critique of it. 

Anyway, let's go through Casey's article....

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CASEY: In his book The Compatibility of Evolution and Design, [Theologian Rope Kojonen, at the University of Helsinki] offers a model in which evolution succeeds because it is intelligently designed......Kojonen argues that evolutionary mechanisms produced the complexity of life. But there’s an intriguing assumption implicit in this: on its own, blind evolution is very unlikely to produce the complex features we see in living organisms. Thus, Kojonen envisions that the evolutionary process receives help from above in the form of the fine-tuning of the initial conditions and natural laws that allow evolution to get the job done.

MY COMMENT: We can see that Casey is starting to go off in the wrong direction already: Exactly what Casey means by "blind evolution on its own" is unclear: Perhaps he's thinking of a process that is unconditionally random? (which of course has no chance of generating the high organization of organic forms even in the lifetime of our immense universe) Or is he thinking of those philosophers who do not believe there is a Christian God but are able to live with the idea that the cosmos with all it's wonderful complex order can be accepted on the basis that "it just is" (See for example Galen Strawson whom I quote here). But at this juncture I am assuming the validity of a Christian theological context and therefore the question of how atheists come to terms with the enigmatic givenness of "natural" organized complexity is not part of my brief. That leaves us with the conundrum of just what Casey means by an independent blind evolution; that seems an impossible conception in a Christian theological context where God is the totalising Sovereign minder of His own creation. Given that the Christian God is the omniscient omnipotent immanent creator Casey's last statement above, which seems to demote God to the level of an assistant, in fact almost a helpful side kick of evolution, would be better written without the phrase "the evolutionary process receives help from above". For example:

Thus, Kojonen envisions that the evolutionary process has been created with sufficient fine-tuning of the initial conditions and natural law to ensure that evolution would get the job done.

In the context of Christian theism it is difficult to coherently imagine a created process working by itself with the occasional nudge from God who is otherwise an absentee landlord; that kind of thinking is the road to deism..... and ultimately even atheism. 

Casey goes onto quote just what Kojonen is trying to tell us (I've retained Casey's emphases):

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KOJONEN: According to this view, then, the possibility of evolution depends on the features of the space of possible forms, where all the forms must be arranged in a way that makes an evolutionary search through it possible. This argument shows how the preconditions for the working of the “blind watchmaker” of natural selection can indeed be satisfied by nature in the case of protein evolution, despite an extreme rarity of functional forms. According to this view, then, the possibility of evolution depends on the features of the space of possible forms, where all the forms must be arranged in a way that makes an evolutionary search through it possible. This argument shows how the preconditions for the working of the “blind watchmaker” of natural selection can indeed be satisfied by nature in the case of protein evolution, despite an extreme rarity of functional forms. Behe (2019, 112) argues that Wagner does not yet solve the puzzle of evolving irreducible complexity, arguing that “it doesn’t even try to account for the cellular machinery that is catalysing the chemical reactions to make the needed components. ” However, suppose that, in the case of the bacterial flagellum, though the vast majority of possible arrangements of biological proteins are non-functional, there nevertheless exists a series of possible functional forms, little “machines” that happen to contain increasing numbers of the flagellum’s vital parts while still serving some other function. This then would allow for the seamless transition from no flagellum to a flagellum over time, through small successive steps. In this manner, by moving through such a suitable library of forms, the blind process of evolution would have the ability to produce even the most complex structures without the intervention of a designer. This is the kind of fine-tuning of the landscape of forms that seems to be required to evolve the kind of biological order described by Behe.

 It seems, then, that defending the power of the evolutionary mechanism requires assuming that the landscape of possible biological forms has some fairly serendipitous properties.

MY COMMENT: Now, unlike Casey what Kojonen is trying to say here is at least intelligible and makes sense.  He is simply telling us that a condition of a working evolutionary system is what I referred to several years ago as the "spongeam". That is, that functional forms (i.e. self-maintaining, self-perpetuating organic structures) must constitute a connected-set in configuration space to allow the evolutionary diffusion process to diffuse throughout that space. The post below contains links to other posts where I introduced this idea mathematically:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Evolution by (Naked) Chance? (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

Kojonen, whether right or wrong, is at least making coherent sense here; so much so that even Casey has understood what Kojonen is trying to say. However, Kojonen does make one bad move in my opinion: He talks about configuration space requiring serendipitous properties; that's a rather inappropriate way of putting it in a Christian theistic context: If the spongeam is a mathematical property and an implication of the initial conditions and laws of physics of our cosmos then given God's relationship with that cosmos it would not be serendipitous, but deliberately chosen and created. But in noting this point does not mean I'm accepting that the spongeam even has a mathematical existence let alone asserting its reification in our cosmos. 

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CASEY: There’s a great irony here in the structure of Kojonen’s argument: He implicitly concedes that evolution is very unlikely to work in your average universe that isn’t finely tuned. He says if evolution is going to work, that’s only because natural laws and initial conditions are specially “fine-tuned.”

MY COMMENT: That's right Casey I think I can agree. It seems fairly intuitively compelling that any old randomly chosen physical regime is unlikely to set up the right conditions (i.e. the spongeam) facilitating the kind of evolution as currently understood; it looks as though a physical regime capable of generating lifeforms in a paltry few billion years has to be carefully chosen!  

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CASEY: Thus, the universe has some pretty lucky properties.  The question then becomes: Are we in Kojonen’s universe? His argument for the feasibility of evolution requires a great degree of “fine-tuning” of nature where functional forms are “arranged in a way” such that it is easy to move from one functional state to another functional state via blind evolutionary mechanisms. Are we in a “universe designed to allow for evolution” in this manner? Or are we in a universe where evolutionary mechanisms don’t seem capable of producing the complexity of life — meaning that they didn’t?

MY COMMENT: Yes, I largely agree Casey, but I would have thought that "a great deal of fine tuning" is exactly the job description of the Great Omniscient, Omnipotent Creator and therefore I wouldn't talk of "pretty lucky properties"! If we are in a universe designed for evolution then in the context of Christian theism it wouldn't be a lucky property, would it? I didn't think that Christians believed in luck when it comes to the creation. Nevertheless, good question Casey:  Are we in a “universe designed to allow for evolution” in this manner? Or are we in a universe where evolutionary mechanisms don’t seem capable of producing the complexity of life?

All we can be sure of is that over millions, if not billions of years, life forms have emerged, changed and adapted. In that trivial sense of mere natural history, evolution has occurred whatever the precise nature of the engine/mechanism driving it that the Good Lord has provisioned it with.  

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CASEY: As my colleagues and I have shown both in a review of Kojonen’s book and in an occasional series of posts here, from protein evolution to the origin of irreducibly complex molecular machines like the flagellum (here and here), the universe we live in does not seem to allow evolutionary mechanisms to produce the complexity of life. We live in the wrong universe for Kojonen’s proposal. But there’s a problem with the structure of Kojonen’s argument that goes even deeper.

MY COMMENT: The NAIDs' believe that functional forms don't constitute a connected-set in configuration space; that is, they believe that most functional forms are irreducibly complex. They may be right on this count. I personally feel that this claim is at least plausible but proving it is notoriously difficult and sometimes ingenious evolutionists will fill in the gaps between the "islands" of functionality with proposed functional "missing links" that start to give a possible gradualist path through configuration space. Really, the NAID case should stop here and focus on assembling the necessary logic and evidence for the case that organic forms are truly irreducibly complex structures. Irreducible complexity, if it can be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, would certainly falsify bog-standard evolution. But no! sensing they're on a very debatable wicket here Casey and colleagues, in their search for a clincher, stick their necks out too far into that "deeper problem" Casey mentions, the land of NAID smoke and mirrors.

For more on the question of irreducible complexity see here:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Evolution and Islands of functionality (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

(*See also my footnote below on computational irreducibility)

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CASEY: Kojonen differs with me. He seeks to preserve and defend the theist on the street’s intuition that life was designed. But in his mind this is not because natural processes are incapable of producing life. In fact, he thinks they are capable of that. That is, while evolutionary processes are inadequate on their own, natural processes in general are capable of producing life. Kojonen thinks this reflects the fact that the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe themselves are fine-tuned and designed to make the origin and evolution of life possible — by natural processes.

MY COMMENT: How paradoxical and confusing: On the one hand Casey talks of evolutionary processes [which are presumably viewed as "natural"] that are inadequate on their own and then juxtaposes that with Kojonen's view that "natural processes in general are capable of producing life." 

But for Christians there really is no such thing as fundamentally natural processes, unless we trivially define them as simply the workings of the physical regime; but fundamentally all such processes are highly unnatural in the sense that they have no necessary existence that we can comprehend (i.e they have no Aseity. See here for more). But thinking in terms of fundamentals rather than superficial definitions we find that: 

a) The cosmic physical regime is highly contingent and unless we have the kind of mentality which allows us to be intellectually satiated with Bertrand Russell's "it just is", the organized complexity of the cosmos remains profoundly puzzling and prompts curiosity to push for deeper meanings. Moreover, as I've said here science, being ultimately a descriptive discipline can never attain to explanatory completeness in sense of Asiety. Hence there will always remain a deeply intuitive unnaturalness about the cosmos. 

b) But even on its own terms our current physics is clearly descriptively incomplete: We still don't have a complete descriptive understanding of our physical regime in terms of succinct laws. So, who knows just how The Good Lord has provisioned this regime to work. Perhaps it has inherited its creator's ability to work miracles? And above all who knows if it has a subtle declarative teleology that's difficult to detect?

In the context of Christian theism Casey's statement that evolutionary processes are inadequate on their own, is unintelligible: If the spongeam has a mathematical existence and has been reified by the Good Lord (and I'm not claiming it has) then evolution, by definition, would be adequate to produce life, and depending on one's definitions it would have done it "naturally". 

And who is this so-called "theist on the street" that we are hearing about? Well, as it turns out it's Casey's alter ego.....

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CASEY: But if natural processes are capable of producing the complexity of life, then isn’t the “theist on the street” wrong to conclude that life was designed in the first place? On what basis can this theist know that the natural laws are “fine-tuned” to allow life to evolve? The theist must have some background knowledge that natural laws can’t produce living systems. But if Kojonen’s thesis is correct, then in our universe the theist ought not to have such background knowledge. After all, natural laws are capable of producing such complex systems!

MY COMMENT: If so-called "natural processes" via the contrivance of the spongeam are capable of producing complex life, then such a contrivance would clearly have to be built into the physical regime. Given the huge space of random possibilities such a specific arrangement is astonishing, perhaps even more so than the existence of life itself.  Therefore, any adequately educated Christian theist would be able to conclude that, assuming standard evolution, divine providence has worked yet another miracle of organization and the intelligent Christian would have no trouble understanding that a process can be both "natural" and designed......this is the basis on which an educated theist can know that the physical regime is fine tuned for life....but I can't speak for Casey's "theist on the street".

The so-called "theist on the street" (which I conclude can only be Casey's alter ego) is portrayed as only being able to view the situation through a pair of polarizing glasses which present a "natural processes vs intelligent agency" choice.  Given this epistemic straight-jacket Casey's street theist is only allowed to jump one way or the other; that is to choose either natural process or intelligent agency; you can't have both! This is a legacy of the simplistic explanatory filter which imposes on the evolutionary question an exclusive OR between "blind natural processes" and intelligent agency.  Casey insists that we all follow him and be channeled into choosing one or the other! NAID culture just seems to be unable to transcend this entrenched habit of mind.  

Casey asks: 

 

On what basis can this theist know that the natural laws are “fine-tuned” to allow life to evolve?  

...... as I've said above: "It seems fairly intuitively compelling that any old randomly chosen laws of physics and initial conditions are unlikely to set up the right conditions (i.e. the spongeam) facilitating evolution as currently understood; it looks as though a physical regime capable of generating life forms in a paltry few billion years has to be carefully chosen!". Therefore, if our educated theist accepts evolution, he therefore knows that this entails that the "natural" physical regime is fined tuned with a vengeance! It is not going to be lost on the average theist as to the deeper explanation as to why this fine tuning might be, although I can't speak for Casey's "theist on the street" whoever that is!

Casey and his ID friends really go off the rails in the next paragraph....

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CASEY & Co: This analogy invites us to consider the epistemological effects of living in a universe described by Kojonen’s model (in which evolution is true, design is confined to the advent of the laws of nature, and biological data are in view). In this universe, it is not clear that humans (including theists on the street) would have the basic epistemological dispositions or beliefs that Kojonen believes undergird our ability to detect design in biology. For example, people who grew up in this universe would not likely believe that nature (i.e., non-agent processes) have only limited ability to build biological complexity. After all, in this universe, the continuity of non-agent processes across the advent of everything from bacteria to blue whales seems to suggest that non-agent causes are quite creative. Similarly, people who grew up in this universe would not likely believe that our own experience of creating complex things is at all relevant to the claim that ‘minds have greater creative power than nature does’. Instead, they would likely believe that our minds are simply a manifestation of nature’s creativity (or the creativity of non-agent causes). 

MY COMMENT: What Casey&Co are trying to get past us here is that in a universe with a spongeam sufficient to support evolution humans would not have the epistemological instincts to detect design because they would grow up to assume that evolution (i.e. a "natural process") shows that intelligent agency isn't needed to create those organic marvels. That view, as a generalisation, is clearly false, although it looks to be true for those like Casey&Co whose culture has imposed a strict "natural processes XOR intelligent design" epistemic filter on the debate. Using this filter means that once it's decided that a structure is a product of "natural forces" the possibility of intelligent activity is thrown out of the window! Casey&co are then stuck.... although I suspect they know in their hearts that such wonderfully creative natural forces must trace back to some kind of Intelligent Aseity.

I propose that the NAID XOR epistemic filter is a cultural construction that depends on the community one is in. The NAID XOR is not as Casey is trying to imply a deeply held instinct somehow bound up with the particulars of the created physical regime. In fact, Romans 1:19-20 tells us that regardless of the details of the creation the general form of that creation alerts an instinct which prompts us that we should at least give some attention to the possibility that a great mind of totalising power and presence may be behind it all; OK, many reject the idea, but at least they can't help such an idea popping up in their heads. So, with regard to a universe where evolution actually works, I would invert one of Casey's statements above thus: 

In an evolutionary universe, it is not clear that humans would not have the basic epistemological dispositions or beliefs giving them the ability to detect design in standard evolutionary biology. 

Now consider this statement by Casey&Co...

After all, in this [evolutionary] universe, the continuity of non-agent processes across the advent of everything from bacteria to blue whales seems to suggest that non-agent causes are quite creative.

...yes, in an evolutionary universe so-called "natural processes" would be very creative. But notice that Casey&Co have slipped in the phrase "non-agent processes"! This is where the NAID's simplistic and non-recursive epistemic explanatory filter lets them down; it prevents them from submitting those very creative natural processes to the explanatory filter itself: Therefore, in NAID culture "natural processes" stay as "non-agent processes" and they are unable to move on from that. 

Evolution, (if it indeed evolution as commonly understood has actually occurred) necessarily entails a highly contrived and contingent process at work. But evolution presents no necessary problem to the educated Christian theist who isn't influenced by the epistemic straight jacket of NAID culture. Beyond that culture and in a Christian theistic context which posits a transcendent creator of omnipotent intelligence and power, the highly sophisticated contingency demanded by a working standard evolutionary model wouldn't be a problem. But for those who like Casey have been affected by a particular branch of secularism which grew out of the enlightenment, the discovery of the mechanical universe at best entailed deistic notions and at worst atheism. Ergo, Casey&Co have imbibed crypto-atheist categories shared by the likes of Richard Dawkins, a man who really does believe that evolution allows him to be an intellectually satisfied atheist; that is, if one deems "it just is" to be intellectually satisfying! As IDist William Dembski has pointed out, in the final analysis evolution is just a way to push the origins question back a stage to just another seemingly improbable and very surprising (= high information) state of affairs; that is, another astonishing status quo where one is still left wondering why "it just is"!

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CASEY & Co: A similar line of thinking applies to the other elements of design detection discussed above. The bottom line is that human cognition would likely be significantly different in Kojonen’s universe than we actually experience it to be. Conversely, the fact that we have the particular cognitive dispositions and beliefs that we currently possess — instead of the ones we’d have in Kojonen’s universe — suggests that we live in a world notably different than captured in Kojonen’s model. Thus, in a particular sense, Kojonen’s model is inconsistent with the lived experience of some humans, including some theists on the street. This seriously harms the plausibility of his proposal, including its defense of everyday theists.

MY COMMENT: Human cognition would likely be significantly different in Kojonen’s universe? Speak for yourself Casey because I don't know what you are talking about! Romans 1:19-20 makes no mention of your natural forces vs intelligent design XOR; it just tells us we can't escape the wonder of the creation regardless of its specifics. Evolution or no evolution the instinct of wonder is there whether one is an atheist or not. See for example atheist Galen Strawson in this post; he is clearly as confounded as anyone else by the astonishingly rich organized contingency of what he believes to be the evolutionary universe. But in spite of his amazement in the end Strawson plumps for a "it just is" philosophy (a very unsatisfactory response for the Christian believer of course). So, I conclude that the instincts which inform Casey&Co that evolution entails the absence of intelligent agency is purely a construction to be found only in the cultural universe of NAID's and Dawkinites. 

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CASEY: Thus, even if Kojonen’s argument were correct and the laws of nature were capable of producing living systems, then his “theist on the street” should not be able to detect design in living systems in the manner he suggests. If the laws of our universe are rigged to produce life, then such an event would be fully natural and should not trigger a design inference. We would see no reason to invoke anything other than normal natural processes to explain life’s complexity. The very fact that life does trigger a design inference for Kojonen’s theist suggests that our experience teaches us such events don’t happen due to natural laws. That means Kojonen’s thesis is self-defeating and cannot be true.

MY COMMENT: Once gain we can see that Casey is projecting his dichotomized XOR thinking onto the abstract so-called theist-on-the-street, a character who assumes this XOR to be valid and is therefore unable to detect design in living things if evolution, as conventionally understood, has taken place.

Notice in particular that Casey uses that emotive term "rigged" as if contriving a physical regime capable of manufacturing life is somehow an underhand and dishonest activity like election rigging or rigging the machines in a casino; it betrays the cultural value system embedded NAID's naive non-recursive explanatory filter.  It's a bit like saying that a robotic automotive factory is "rigged" to manufacture cars and concluding that these cars are a product of "natural forces" and therefore have nothing to do with intelligent design.  

The logic of the NAID explanatory filter is such that if one is a cultural NAID then it follows that if the physical regime of our universe is "rigged" (gasp!) to produce life, then such an event would be fully natural and should not trigger a design inference. As we have seen, on this question the NAIDs are really only speaking for themselves (and some atheists). The culture of which Casey is representative is blind to the fact that in the evolutionary scenario those so-called "natural processes" evoke enough wonder to trigger the need for a deeper explanation than "it just is", at least among those willing to accept Christian theism. But because NAID culture is so enamored with a non-recursive XOR epistemic filter then they are impelled by their logic to conclude that...

The very fact that life does trigger a design inference for Kojonen’s theist suggests that our experience teaches us such events don’t happen due to natural laws.

That is, imposing the logic of the NAID XOR epistemic filter on evolution one is forced to conclude that evolution did it XOR God did it. NAID Nonsense! But it's right up the street of the Dawkinites who believe that creation and evolution are necessarily at odds. 

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None of the foregoing is to say that I am necessarily committed to believing that the spongeam is even a mathematical reality let alone a cosmically reified reality. All I'm saying is that Casey&Co's concepts are deeply flawed and don't work as the basis for competent arguments against evolution.  NAID culture has dug itself into an a priori anti-evilution position and is committed to disproving evilution at all costs. Part of the cost of this is a bias toward unwoke politics; probably an effect of their off-hand rejection by the academic establishment. 

Quantum Non-Linearity: Anti-Science or Anti Academic Establishment? (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

Quantum Non-Linearity: Christian World Views. Part 2: The Christian Academic Establishment (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

Footnote:

* Computational irreducibility is a concept introduced by Wolfram. A computationally irreducible task is one where it is not possible to find a faster analytical solution to a problem than that of actually carrying out a computational simulation, a computation which could potentially be very long winded. It may well be that the evolutionary question is a computationally irreducible problem and therefore it is not possible to analytically determine whether a given physical regime is capable of generating living structures unless one sets up the regime in a very literal sense and performs the simulation in real time.  Thus, the NAID desire to disprove the possibility of evolution via some shortcut analytical method may be a vain quest. If so, then the only way to verify or falsify whether or not organic forms are irreducibly complex isn't to be found through some shortcut analytical calculation but via sufficient observation on what has actually happened or not happened; that is, on natural history istelf. Natural history acts as the computationally irreducible "simulation" which reveals the answer to the question of whether organic forms are irreducibly complex or not.

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I'll be commenting on this in my next post: 

Can Evolution and Design Work in Harmony? | Evolution News

In my next post on "Matters Arising" I will also be commenting on the ability of "natural processes" to create information and the relation of the spongeam to the second law of thermodynamics.