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| The de facto IDists I've come across believe the configurations of life have been patched in as might an artifact against a backdrop "natural landscape" and therefore life is regarded as entirely anomalous against the background physics of the Cosmos. |
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Game over for antievolutionary No Free Lunch
argument
By Nick
Matzke on December 4, 2015 10:58 PM | 121 Comments
This has been obvious from the start, but as far as I know it has taken
10 years for the ID guys to finally admit it. Winston Ewert writes at the
Discovery Institute blog:
However, Felsenstein and English note that a more realistic model of
evolution wouldn’t have a random fitness landscape. Felsenstein, in particular,
argues that “the ordinary laws of physics, with their weakness of long-range
interactions, lead to fitness surfaces much smoother than white-noise fitness
surfaces.” I agree that weak long-range interactions should produce a fitness
landscape somewhat smoother than random chance and this fitness landscape would
thus be a source of some active information.
GAME OVER, MAN. GAME OVER! The whole point of Dembski
et al. invoking “No Free Lunch” theorems was to argue that, if evolutionary
searches worked, it meant the fitness function must be designed, because
(logical jump herein) the No Free Lunch theorems showed that evolutionary
searches worked no better than chance, when averaged over all possible fitness
landscapes.
Emergency backup arguments to avoid admitting complete bankruptcy below
the fold, just so I’m not accused of leaving out the context
--------------------------------------------------------FOLD------------------------------------------------------------------.
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We disagree in that I do not think that is going to be a sufficient
source of active information to account for biology. I do not have a proof of
this. But neither does Felsenstein have a demonstration that it will produce
sufficient active information. What I do have is the observation of existing
models of evolution. The smoothness present in those models does not derive
from some notion of weak long-range physics, but rather from telelogy as
explored in my various papers on them.
As always, the ID objections to evolution, when stripped of
pseudo-technical camouflage, boil down to “I just don’t buy it because (gut
feeling).”
See also: recent PT posts and Jason Rosenhouse at EvolutionBlog.
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FE did a good job of demonstrating the plausibility (but admittedly not "proof" as Ewart points out) of the idea that by means of fitness surfaces physics provides the information needed for evolution to occur. Although like Ewart I have reservations about fitness surfaces (doubts which I express here) I don't have an in-principle objection to the notion that physics (even if has to be modified) is implicated as the agency of biological information. This is where I differ from the view of the average IDist. They are likely to have an in-principle objection to any idea that physics could be the providential means by which evolution has been directed (And for standard evolution to work it must be channeled). But for the IDists I have featured in this blog the default view appears to be that the information for life has been patched-in ad hoc by God (and let's make no bones about just what de facto ID really means by "intelligence"). This divine ad hoc activity is not dissimilar to the way the intelligence behind the 2001 Space Odyssey monolith patched-in an artifact on the otherwise "natural" lunar landscape. The 2001 Space Odyssey ID paradigm treats biological structures as bolt on extras in the cosmic scene, extras that can only be explained by the activity of an auxiliary intelligence, much like alien artifacts. This view is at least in part driven by the explanatory filter epistemic. This epistemic leads to a very suspect theology where God works on the natural order rather than in the natural order.
There's not enough information in the above quotes to know whether Ewart's take on teleology leads him away from this god-of-the-gaps ad hocery or not. However, I suspect that behind his rejection of FE's work lies de facto ID's standard false dichotomy of God vs. Natural forces. God works the way he works: If God works through the physics of fitness surfaces (leaving aside my doubts) then that's the way he works and we have to get used to it; I see no point in apposing biologists simply for the sake of it.
Relevant links:
There's not enough information in the above quotes to know whether Ewart's take on teleology leads him away from this god-of-the-gaps ad hocery or not. However, I suspect that behind his rejection of FE's work lies de facto ID's standard false dichotomy of God vs. Natural forces. God works the way he works: If God works through the physics of fitness surfaces (leaving aside my doubts) then that's the way he works and we have to get used to it; I see no point in apposing biologists simply for the sake of it.
Relevant links:
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