Picture from http://www.faradayschools.com/re-topics/re-year-10-11/god-of-the-gaps/
There are plenty of gaps in Dr V. J. Torley's arguments!
This post on Uncommon Descent
descends into a glorious muddle as its writer, Dr. V. J. Torley, slowly becomes aware of the
ill-formation of some of his concepts.
Let me state in advance from
whence come Dr. Torley’s conceptual problems: They stem from the North American
Intelligent Design community’s huge and irreversible intellectual investment in
one candidate only; namely, the belief
that our physical regime did not and cannot generate life. They have
burnt their bridges on this one and there is no going back. If North American
ID has got it wrong then they go to the execution wall, probably taking
theists like myself along with them; in such a polarized and belligerent debate
people are in no mood to make fine distinctions. I support Intelligent
Design, but I'm not exactly uncritical of the North American neo-god-of-the-gaps
version of it. Ironically, then, I frequently find myself on the side of atheists and
evolutionists.
Let me start with this quote
from Torley:
Mark Frank appears to be confusing the term, “generated,” with the
term. “described.” here.
In an appendix to his main post Torley backs down on this
point as a result of criticism from Jeffery Shallit:
Which brings me to Professor Shallit’s remarks in a post over at The
Skeptical Zone, in response to my earlier (misguided) attempt to draw a
distinction between the mathematical generation of a pattern and the verbal
description of that pattern:
This is what Shallit says:
In the Kolmogorov setting, “concisely described” and “concisely
generated” are synonymous. That is because a “description” in the Kolmogorov
sense is the same thing as a “generation”; descriptions of an object x in
Kolmogorov are Turing machines T together with inputs I such that T on input I
produces x. The size of the particular description is the size of T plus the
size of I, and the Kolmogorov complexity is the minimum over all such descriptions.
That’s music to my ears! Clear
and rigorous! Torley rightly accepted Shallit’s correction, but he goes on to
shift his concept of “descriptive
complexity as used by the ID movement” by defining it in the intuitive terms of
“function” – that is, in terms of purpose. For example, a knife is for the
function of cutting. He says that Shallit’s rigorous mathematical concepts are:
…an inappropriate (not to mention inefficient) means of determining
whether an object possesses functionality of a particular kind – e.g. is this
object a cutting implement? What I’m suggesting, in other words, is that at
least some functional terms in our language are epistemically basic, and that
our recognition of whether an object possesses these functions is partly
intuitive.
The foregoing rather clouds the issue in
that it is telling us that an object does not intrinsically possess the property of function by virtue of the intrinsic properties of its configuration
but only by way of its relation to its context; that is “function” is an extrinsic property. Fair enough, I can
accept that, but let me comment, as I have commented many times before, this is
not hard science. Because North American ID conceives the role of intelligence as
an ancillary agent supplementary to and to be contrasted over and against “natural
agencies”, it is therefore more akin to the soft and imaginative science of archaeology than it is to the physical sciences.
If I understand Torley aright then
the extrinsic property of functionality that gives an object it specificity is relatively
easy to describe even if the configuration of the object needed to fulfil this
function is complex. Hidden in Torley’s concept of functionality is, in fact,
an implicit allusion to purpose. I’ll accept this, as it fits in with North American
ID’s archaeological paradigm of intelligent design. However, we must bear in mind that evolutionary/OOL ideas do not make use of this very human
concept of specificity: In evolution/OOL “function” is based on the simply described “purpose”
that organisms are able to survive through self-perpetuation by replication; organisms serve less a context than their own intrinsic requirement to persist.
In the main body of Torley’s post we find this:
…..a pattern exhibits order if it can be generated by “a short algorithm
or set of commands,” and complexity if it can’t be compressed into a shorter
pattern by a general law or computer algorithm……The definition of order and
complexity relates to whether or not a pattern can be generated mathematically
by “a short algorithm or set of commands,” rather than whether or not it can be
described in a few words. The definition of specificity, on the other hand,
relates to whether or not a pattern can be characterized by a brief verbal
description. There is nothing that prevents a pattern from being difficult to
generate algorithmically, but easy to describe verbally. Hence it is quite
possible for a pattern to be both complex and specified.
That is undoubtedly wrong! It is
quite likely that any pattern can be
generated by some algorithm or other, if given enough time. After all, even the
simple binary counting algorithm ultimately generates every pattern. This would mean that according to Torley no pattern is complex and all patterns are ordered! What Torley
seems to have neglected here is the role of execution time in computation: His
idea does work if one requires the generating algorithm to be not only short in
terms of commands but also short in terms of execution time. Although all
patterns can ultimately be computer generated, only a relatively small subset
can be generated in a realistically short time with short algorithms. But reading between the lines we can see what
Torley is after here: He is leading up to claiming that living configurations
are “complex”, therefore cannot be generated by “mindless” algorithms, and therefore
must require “intelligent agency” to set them up! Basically this is the “God Intelligence
did it vs. nature did it” dichotomy rearing its ugly head again!
But in his appendix to the main
post Torley admits that what I have just quoted above is wrong and he shifts
his ground again:
This, I would now say, is incorrect as it stands. The reason why it
is quite possible for an object to be both complex and specified is that the
term “complex” refers to the (very low) likelihood of its originating as a
result of physical laws (not mathematical algorithms), whereas the term
“specified” refers to whether it can be described briefly – whether it be
according to some algorithm or in functional terms.
So, we see here that Torley is
defining complexity in relation to the ability or lack of ability of the particular algorithms that constitute the physics of our universe to generate patterns;
that is, he is defining a pattern to be “complex” if there is a very low
probability of our universe's physical algorithms generating this pattern. Once
again we can see Torley is trying to move in the same direction. He is setting up the
definition of complexity so that he can eventually claim that life is “complex”
and therefore impossible to generate via the physics we know; ergo, it must be
an ancillary archaeological intelligence that did it!
But at least we have a concession
here. At least Torley isn't denying that perhaps in principle there is a possibility
of the patterns of life being generated by some algorithm or other, even if he
doesn't think our own particular physics is capable of doing so. In the light
of his realising that there is a difference between the capabilities of
algorithms in general and our specific physical algorithms, Torley goes on to
admit that Stephen Meyer has made a similar mistake to himself. He quotes Meyer as follows (Signature
in the Cell l Harper One, 2009, p. 106):
Complex sequences exhibit an irregular, nonrepeating arrangement
that defies expression by a general law or computer algorithm (an algorithm is
a set of expressions for accomplishing a specific task or mathematical
operation). The opposite of a highly complex sequence is a highly ordered
sequence like ABCABCABCABC, in which the characters or constituents repeat over
and over due to some underlying rule, algorithm or general law. (p. 106)
[H]igh probability repeating sequences like ABCABCABCABCABCABC have
very little information (either carrying capacity or content)… Such sequences
aren’t complex either. Why? A short algorithm or set of commands could easily
generate a long sequence of repeating ABC’s, making the sequence compressible.
(p. 107) (Emphases mine – VJT.)
Torley spots the issues with
Meyers work:
There are two problems with this definition. First, it mistakenly
conflates physics with mathematics, when it declares that a complex sequence
can be generated by “a general law or computer algorithm.” I presume that by
“general law,” Dr. Meyer means to refer to some law of Nature, since on page
107, he lists certain kinds of organic molecules as examples of complexity. The
problem here is that a sequence may be easy to generate by a computer
algorithm, but difficult to generate by the laws of physics (or vice versa). In
that case, it may be complex according to physical criteria but not according
to mathematical criteria (or the reverse), generating a contradiction.
Second, the definition conflates: (a) the repetitiveness of a
sequence, with (b) the ability of a short algorithm to generate that sequence,
and (c) the Shannon compressibility of that sequence. The problem here is that
there are non-repetitive sequences which can be generated by a short algorithm.
Some of these non-repeating sequences are also Shannon-incompressible. Do these
sequences exhibit order or complexity?
In consequence Torley goes on to
say:
What I’d like to propose is that the term 'order' should be used in
opposition to high probabilistic complexity. In other words, a pattern is ordered
if and only if its emergence as a result of law-governed physical processes is
not a highly improbable event. More succinctly: a pattern is ordered if it is reasonably likely to
occur, in our universe, and complex
if its physical realization in our universe is a very unlikely event.
Thus on this definition a fractal
which can be generated by a simple algorithm becomes complex because:
The same line of argument holds true for fractals: when assessing
whether they exhibit order or (probabilistic) complexity, the question is not
whether they repeat themselves or are easily generated by mathematical
algorithms, but whether or not they can be generated by law-governed physical
processes.
So, although Torley does allow
that in principle mathematics can generate “complex” patterns, perhaps even
life itself, true to the North American ID dualistic paradigm that sets “intelligence”
over and against “natural processes” he doesn't want to believe that our particular
physical regime is capable of generating the complexity of life. It is this outlook,
I suggest, which motivates the whole of North American ID and any contrary suggestion
is resisted tooth and nail.
We know that at the back of
Torley's mind is the dichotomised belief that physics didn't do it but rather God did it! Consequently he finishes this post with
this:
In the meantime, can you forgive us in the Intelligent Design
community for being just a little skeptical of claims that “no intelligence was
required” to account for the origin of proteins, of the first living cell
(which would have probably required hundreds of proteins), of complex organisms
in the early Cambrian period, and even of the appearance of a new species, in
view of what has been learned about the prevalence of singleton proteins and
genes in living organisms?
Given the polarised nature of
the debate, then should it turn out that life has been generated by our physical
regime then in Torley's dualistic paradigm this entails “no intelligence was required”. North American IDists would then have
to go to the wall to be shot!
Torley’s post is in fact a
continuation of a previous post. Toward the end of this previous post he really
betrays why he is a neo-god-of-the gaps IDist:
….it is possible to argue that the very existence of laws of Nature
which generate this order, constitutes powerful evidence for an Intelligent
Creator. But that’s a metaphysical argument, not a scientific one. Since
Intelligent Design is a scientific quest for patterns in Nature that are best
explained as the product of intelligent agency, such an argument would fall
outside the ambit of Intelligent Design theory.….. it is rather silly for Harry
McCall to use the Chladni plate experiment to argue that “a man made dumb
frequency generator can create many different detailed intricate designs”, when
the designs actually arise as a consequence of the laws of Nature, which humans
did not create. I conclude that McCall’s attempted refutation of Intelligent
Design misses the mark badly.
Although I don’t accept Torley’s
view that there is clear cut demarcation between the metaphysical and the empirical,
I get his point here: The eminent and immanent God of Christianity is a much more
abstruse concept than North American ID's “nuts and bolts” style archaeological intelligence that is ancillary to the physical regime and works within that regime. True, such a homunculus creator would be a little more
amenable to scientific epistemology than a transcendent and yet immanent God
and so perhaps we can understand the motivation behind North American ID. But conversely we can understand the hostility of much of the scientific establishment who see ID replacing a "law and disorder" science by a soft science of the archaeology of a very alien intelligence.
My own gut feeling, as per Genesis 1, is that our cosmos is a product of a single covenant and therefore I doubt that replicating
life was somehow “supernaturally” patched in by God. After all, the ID
community by and large accepts an old Earth natural history if not the “natural”
mechanisms of evolution/OOL. That natural history shows evidence of being phased into developmental periods
not unlike human history suggests to me that some other providential "natural" mechanism may be at work to
explain this phased history without recourse to ad-hoc patching. The creation looks to be a
single seamless robe, a kind of covering for God that can be folded up at any time (Hebrews
1:10ff). As such the immanent living God is only just under the surface of this covering, a covering that is more akin to the skin of a living thinking thing than a
mechanism. These are just my current feelings and the direction in which my thoughts are
tentatively moving.
Some previous posts relevant to the foregoing:
