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| Unfortunately, the NAID view of Intelligent Design invites this sort of mockery. They've only got themselves to blame. |
I'm going to critique the following two posts on Evolution News. They are relevant to the points I raised in my last two posts (See here and here).
Physics, Information Loss, & Intelligent Design | Evolution News
But I must start by criticizing this post:
Is Life an Information Ratchet? | Evolution News
...which is referenced in the first link.
The author of these links, Eric Hedin, hasn't defined exactly what he means by "information" but instead assumes we know what he, and presumably his ID tribe, means by it. For Hedin the connotations of the label "information" are proprietary to him and his NAID tribal group and these meanings can be resorted to at any time by NAID protagonists to undermine attempts to bring down a NAID target of unknown whereabouts.
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So, starting with the second link, Hedin writes:
HEDIN: An information ratchet would be
some mechanism or process that causes the information content of a system to
increase with the passage of time and prevents or limits its decrease. Key to
understanding any ratchet mechanism is to grasp that its performance is
predetermined by its mechanism
MY COMMENT: This statement is telling us what the average NAID is never expecting to find: A "natural" ratchet which entails an increase in "information"; whatever "information" means in this context. Algorithms do exist which increase "information" in the Shannon meaning of the term. Viz: Simple algorithms (such as binary counting) can be developed which, starting from configurational uniformity, systematically work their way through a gamut of configurations and so eventually arrive at random configurations (See here for a definition of randomness). An observer with no knowledge of the background algorithm would then, on the basis of Shannon's definition of information, see these complex random sequences as having maximum information. (See here for the definition of probability). On these definitions, then, we would have an example of information being created. The predetermination of these systems is neither here nor there: The appropriately uninitiated observer sees information being created (in the Shannon sense)
HEDIN: Do natural ratchets exist in the physical, non-living world? Examples of natural mechanisms that approach the specific functionality of human-designed ratchets seem to be lacking. We might, however, claim that gravity is a sort of natural ratchet seen on Earth, in that it moves objects down and limits them from moving up. However, its target direction is only generally located, so that material may take any circuitous route in moving to a region of lower elevation, and that region could be anywhere on, or even within the planet.
While acknowledging the ratchet-like effect of gravity to move objects down (to a lower gravitational potential) we must avoid the error of attributing additional abilities to this natural ratchet-like phenomenon. For example, while gravity can cause rocks to slide down a mountain slope, it cannot assemble those rocks into a castle in the valley. Why not? Simply because the mechanism is not designed to accomplish this task.
MY COMMENT: Firstly, we can say that configurational ratchets do exist in nature: For under the right conditions of temperature, pressure and concentration, crystalline configurations capture atoms which then have a low probability of leaving the structure. In this change the high disorder of a solution of molecules (for example of salt) is changing to one of a highly organized crystal. This doesn't violate the second law because the lower energy of the crystal means it loses heat to the environment which in turn implies that the combined system of crystal and heated environment has a higher statistical weight; that is, the overall entropy of the total system, crystal plus environment, has increased.
When it comes to the creation of fullerenes, we have a "natural process" which can create relatively sophisticated structures: It would be quite a challenge for humans to design and engineer a system that generates Buckminster structures artificially. It goes to show that the question of whether so-called "natural processes" (sic) have been designed to generate configurations poses itself straight away as soon as we look at nature; in fact even before we start pondering the question of organic configurations. Unfortunately, however, the NAID's flawed explanatory filter imposes a "natural forces" vs "Intelligent Design" dichotomy at this point which means that the filter does not naturally pick up on the possibility of design in the very fabric of reality. This seems to be the result of an affectation in NAID culture to retain the gloss of a "scientific" community by not mentioning "God", a being who transcends the fabric of reality (although "God" is, in fact, implicitly recognized in NAID subtext). In NAID philosophy the unidentified intelligence (which could be little green men) plays the role of a kind of auxiliary agent of physical causation to be invoked when attempts at explaining configurations in terms of so-called "natural forces" fails. The NAIDs are looking for evidence of direct intelligent action involved in the initial creation of organic configurations. In contrast highly organized crystals are clearly generated by known physical conditions and therefore the NAID explanatory filter classifies them as caused by "natural forces" and not intelligent agency; but for a transcendent theist such as myself, this classification is clearly wrong.
The NAIDs would be very wary of the suggestion that if a transcendent omniscient omnipotent God can create a cosmos which generates crystals then perhaps he's gone a whole lot further and designed a cosmos which generates life. To admit that the "natural" cosmos may be provisioned to generate life would be a betrayal of the NAID paradigm; namely, that those "natural forces" are "blind" and ineffectual as far as the generation of life is concerned and must be contrasted against the mysteries of "intelligence". This in, my opinion, may be underrating the provisions of God's creation.
But to explicitly mention God in a cosmic design context is all but an embarrassment in NAID circles because they affect to style themselves as making a purely scientific point. They are then inexorably drawn by the logic of their precepts to the conclusion that intelligence itself, even in human beings who are manifestly part of the material creation, is somehow transcendent of those so-called "natural forces".
ERIC HEDIN: Random outcomes of a rockslide might include one slab-shaped rock leaning against another, resembling a lean-to, but any structure with the complexity of stonework typically seen in a castle could never happen within the spacetime limits of our universe. For most people, this is common sense. As Douglas Axe writes in his book, "Undeniable", our design intuition is correct regarding the improbability of functionally coherent outcomes (such as a castle) occurring by chance. For such complex, functional results, the ratio of “correct” outcomes to “incorrect” outcomes is too small to be obtained by any undirected process in a finite universe such as ours.
MY COMMENT: Although it is clear that God's creation is equipped with some sophisticated configurational ratchets which generate things like galaxies, stars, planets, and crystals this is unlikely to satisfy the NAID's demand for a rachet which increases organic "information". But what does "information" mean in this context? If we use the well-established Shannon definition of information (That is -log [Prob]), it actually comes up with different answers depending on how we apply this definition.
If we are talking about the unconditional probability of configurations like crystals, then it would follow that because crystals as a class have a minute statistical weight then the unconditional probability of a crystal appearing is vanishingly small and correspondingly crystals have a very high information content. That is:
Prob = P(crystal class) ~ very small => high information
Equation 1
Ergo, a big crystal is unlikely to form in the lifetime of universe if the cosmos was a purely random affair. But in contrast if we are talking about the conditional probability of a crystal; that is given the laws of physics and the right environmental conditions etc (i.e. the physical conditions), this probability is very high and therefore a crystal then has a low information. That is:
Prob = P(Crystallisation, Right physical conditions) ~ high => low information
Equation 2
So, as far as the atoms/molecules of the crystal are concerned we have a ratchet here which locks in what would otherwise be a high information configuration. Because Shannon information is based on probabilities and probabilities are observer relative then whether or not a crystal is a high information configuration depends on one's point of view: Coming to a crystal without any knowledge at all we find that it has a very low probability and therefore high information: In this context crystallization has effectively ratcheted in a high information configuration. But once we become aware of the nature of the physical conditions a crystal then assumes high probability and therefore a low information.
But now consider these two equations:
Prob = P(organism) ~ very small=> high information
Equation 3
Prob = P(Organism, Right physical conditions, i.e the physics of the reproductive system) ~ high
=> low information
Equation 4
Cleary, again, the extremely low statistical weight of the class of organisms means that the unconditional probability of life (Equation 3) is vanishingly small: We don't expect an organism to assemble itself from a purely random physical regime. In that sense organic forms have a high (Shannon) information content (or high "surprisal" values as it is sometimes expressed). However, given the right conditions (i.e. Physics and a reproductive system) a new organism has a high chance of forming. Under these circumstances life has high probability and therefore low information.
The physical ratchet which creates crystalline structures given some fairly basic physical conditions is one thing, but the physical ratchet which creates an organism from a reproductive system is quite another. A reproductive system is a highly sophisticated configuration which itself has a vanishingly small unconditional probability; that is, it is a high information system.
It is relationships like equation 4 which has led NAIDs to believe there is such a thing as a conservation of information: That is, in order to create sophisticated configurations of life one must already have in place a sophisticated generation configuration, which because it has a vanishingly small probability will have a correspondingly a high information. So, lowering the information of an otherwise improbable outcome comes at the expense of another high improbability; in this case a sophisticated life generating engine in the form of a reproductive system. At this juncture the conservation of information that Hedin and other NAIDs promote seems plausible. But recycling the words of H G Wells ' Time Traveller at the end of chapter 6 of Wells' The Time Machine:
"Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough - as most wrong theories are!"
...as we will eventually see!
ERIC HEDIN: Could a natural information ratchet exist? Since our goal is to understand whether life is an information ratchet, we first need to examine what kind of mechanism might be required to cause a living system to ratchet up its information content over time. To increase information means to select outcomes that correspond to a greater level of functional or meaningful complexity. The only way for this to happen is if the selection mechanism (in other words, the ratchet) is designed to produce the target outcome, and this means that the mechanism must already contain the information specifying the target. A physical mechanism cannot produce any information beyond what it already contains.
MY COMMENT: Here Hedin talks of "functional or meaningful complexity" which I assume is his way of trying to distinguish between the hyper-complexity of randomness and those strange organic configurations which are at once both complex and yet organized. But rather than use vague ideas such as "functional or meaningful complexity" we need something a little more solid. What living configurations are all about is more clearly and less mysteriously expressed as this: The main feature of the molecular configurations of life is that given a particular environmental context they are capable of self-maintenance and self-multiplication in that environment. Therefore, should these configurations come about, repeat, should they come about, then their self-perpetuating properties lock them in: In short, they constitute the "teeth" of the ratchet we are looking for. In fact, as we know from observation of the organic world there are many, many of these self-perpetuating "teeth" occupying configuration space, and these range from single cells to huge communities of cells in symbiotic relationship. But creating self-maintaining and self-multiplying configurations from scratch would challenge the intelligence of any human designer; such configurations are fine examples of complex organization; (that is, they are configurations which occupy at once the world of high organization and at the same time the world of high informational complexity as per randomness). The question Hedin is really trying to ask is this: Has God created a physical world with an information ratchet which favours the emergence of living configurations? This would mean that the conditional probability of life is well above its absolute unconditional probability; Well, we've got the teeth but what we also need to know is this: Have the teeth been arranged into a ratchet? More technically we can put the question thus: Does the spongeam exist with a sufficient diffusion dynamic to allow diffusion to permeate the structure of the spongeam?
Self-perpetuating configurations are highly organized. That is as a class they have a very low statistical weight, and this means as a per equation 1 that we can say this of their unconditional probability:
Prob = P(class of self perpetuating structures) ~ very small => high information
Equation 5
...and if our physical regime is to have a realistic chance of generating such structures then in analogy to the conditional probability of equation 2 we require:
Prob = P(class of self-perpetuating structures, right physical regime) ~ realistically high
=> low information
Equation 6
The big question is however, does the "right physical regime" exist? Since I'm not coy in invoking the agency of a transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient God, that such a regime just might have been chosen & created for our cosmos is a possibility that I must take seriously and not dismiss with a wave of the hand as mere "blind natural forces". As I've said before the creation, in all its contingency, is hardly "natural".
ERIC HEDIN: But natural processes cannot produce unnatural results. Selection based on the ratchet mechanism of increased fitness cannot of itself produce novel complex functionality if each successive small change does not give some increased advantage towards survival and reproduction.
But as shown in our examination of the functionality of any ratchet mechanism, it cannot produce an outcome beyond what it was designed to achieve. With information as the outcome, the mechanism can only reproduce the level of information it already contains.
MY COMMENT: Three comments here:
1. Playing with Semantics: Those very contingent "natural processes" are in fact very unnatural in not having "natural" aseity but they have been created by a transcendent entity that presumably has Aseity. So on the basis of this semantics we shouldn't be surprised if those "natural processes" produced "unnatural results". It's also worth noting that the "unnaturalness" of creation isn't merely a past tense event: It is in fact present-tense-continuous: Those descriptive transcendent laws, whether statistical or deterministic have no logical necessity to persist in regulating the cosmos, but the fact is they do persist. The physical regime is as unnatural as "unnatural" can be and I would venture to say that unnatural results are par for the course.
2. The Ratchet: As for the ratchet mechanism: Well, we've defined an organism as a "ratchet tooth" in that it locks itself in given the right environment. But the big question here is are those ratchet teeth close enough to allow the diffusion process to work its way through configuration space to those highly complex yet highly ordered self-perpetuating organic configurations? IDist William Dembski talks about this subject in terms of the space between islands of functionality. If this question is answered in the negative it would be an evolution stopper - at least evolution as conventionally understood. But if one is prepared to admit that we are dealing with a creative transcendent intelligence of unimaginable power we simply can't dismiss the possibility that God may have provisioned the cosmos with a physical regime that inserts the right physical conditions into equation 6 (i.e. with a spongeam) and would considerably enhance the probability of life being generated. If this is the case, then we could recycle Hedin's last sentence above as:
In our examination of the functionality of any ratchet mechanism, it cannot produce an outcome beyond what it was designed to achieve; in this case the physical regime has been designed to generate life itself.
...and as far as the human observer is concerned such a physical regime (if it exists) would appear to generate, that is create, information.
3. Information conservation: Hedin hasn't defined how he understands "information" an omission which makes his last sentence in the quote above incoherent. But contrary to what he is attempting to incoherently tell us here, we find that by any intuitively compelling standards information can be generated (See Part II).
ERIC HEDIN: Another Process at Work: Given the obvious, that the complexity of organisms on Earth has increased through time from single-cell archaea to functional multicellular creatures, some process other than a supposed evolutionary information ratchet must have been at work. The genomic information content of the prokaryotic cells descriptive of the earliest life on Earth falls far short of the greater information content and complexity of advanced life. An intelligent mind is the only known source for the necessary input of complex specified information throughout biological history. Attributing the vast diversity of life on Earth to intelligent design provides an explanation more in line with reality than the misguided concept of an information ratchet.
MY COMMENT: I think most of us accept that organisms have increased their organizational complexity through time as Hedin says; at least from single cell organisms to those huge complexes of symbiotic cells. However, I have heard some atheists being rather diffident about measures of complexity which betray an arrow of time pointing in the direction of increasing organized complexity. This is because such a trend is so easily coopted as evidence of a cosmos with a progressive purpose, and this makes some atheists very nervous; strong atheists like to think that there is no selective contingency in the cosmos and that all options are kept on the table with equal probability. As for the IDists they should be asking themselves; why this developmental pattern in life? And why is there so much evidence for nested cladistics? That to me hints of some kind of "natural" (sic) process at work rather than ad hoc injections of "information" from time to time (see picture at the head of this post).
Yes, I can accept that we may well come to the conclusion that the only sense we can make of the progressively fruitful organization of the cosmos and above all its clearly biased contingency, is for it to have its origins in a transcendent a priori intelligence. But where the NAID community go wrong is that they fail to take into account the plausible implications of transcendent intelligence. Those very plausible implications are that the very created unnaturalness of the fabric of the cosmos has been provisioned to generate life. Instead, NAIDs use the model of a cosmically in-house intelligence (that is, one that is part of the cosmos) which takes the fabric of the cosmos as a given and then creates configurations from the fabric of creation by tinkering with it as might a human or alien intelligence. Their view of matter is one of it being a passive medium like blind clay in the hands of a potter. But as soon as we admit a transcendent omnipotent omniscient creator of matter then the possibility of a proactive information ratchet appears on my suspect list.
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The NAID community have painted themselves into a corner with a paradigm that dichotomizes intelligent design and "natural forces" and expresses itself in their flawed explanatory filter. Their paradigm works if we are dealing with cosmic "in-house" intelligence such as humans or aliens but fails if we are looking for an omnipotent & omniscience transcendent intelligence such as the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. But their paradigm is now entrenched in the NAID community. They are therefore committed to downgrading the created processes of reality as mere passive "blind natural forces" rather than those forces being the instrument of transcendent intelligent activity, yesterday, today and forever.
My ongoing critique of NAID philosophy will continue as I look at Hedin's second article.
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