And Again: Where North American ID goes wrong

                    Time for another critique of North American ID

North American ID tends to veer toward political partisanship
Picture from: https://www.discovery.org/

On several counts I can give a cautious endorsement to the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) movement. But this is a very qualified endorsement as I have criticisms of both their intellectual position and their cultural & political posturing (*3). See for example my criticism of Casey Luskin in this series. Moreover, my acceptance of the intelligent design argument for God is very cautious compared to NAID culture; for given that we are extrapolating from our experience with the works of human and animals (& aliens?) who act within the created context, to the works of a very Alien Totalizing Being who is postulated to be The Context of creation, it seems a bit of a stretch to claim that we can uncritically use what we observe of human and animal intelligence as a model for the intelligence of God. However, I would certainly concede that given the remarkable and irreducible organization of our cosmos, which for me most forcibly emerges in the descriptive effectiveness of the elegant algorithms of physics, there is a compelling intuition that by analogy the cosmos itself has its origins in an all embracing intelligence. This feeling is further reinforced when set against the arguments of arrogant atheist blowhard Richard Carrier who deludes himself with his misconceptions about probability theory as he attempts to account for physics as an aspect of randomness. 

However, as I have suggested in this short paper, I nevertheless take a rather reserved attitude toward the simple extrapolation of design arguments for God using Bayesian ideas. For me a faithful & personal God is an a-priori feature of my world view (Hebs 11:6), a feature which not only promotes a successful epistemology but also makes ultimate sense of a seemingly senseless world, a world whose irreducibly contingent organization is otherwise destined to remain an enigma. On this account God is not a simple inductive extrapolation from observation but rather the initial step in an abductive approach which gives anthropic meaning and purpose to the world (*1). Without this sense making world view one is left with little but a bleak absurdity where nothing makes sense (see Brian Cox). So, whilst I'm in sympathy with the general thrust of the NAID movement (but not their politics) I would nevertheless want to point out that they have over invested in the following points of view.....

1. The so called explanatory filter: When applied to human, animal and even alien activity, activity which takes place within the creation this filter works. But it all too easily leads to naive "God of the Gaps" thinking when applied to divine activity. This has mislead NAIDs to commit to needless subliminal "God-of-the-gaps" thinking as evidenced by their total commitment to anti-evolutionism.

3. Anti-evolutionism: OK, I can accept that some theists, from a theological point of view, might find evolution difficult to stomach. But we cannot rule out evolution on the basis of the category mistake that it classifies as a "blind natural force". If the Divine is as totalizing as Christian theology suggests then there is no such thing as "blind natural forces" incapable of filling explanatory gaps which according to NAID otherwise need filling with the interventions of divine design. If the process of evolution as commonly conceived has taken place in relatively short cosmic times then it is itself a remarkable work of creation. If you are going to argue against evolution it must be from empirical grounds not on the basis of God-of-the-gaps intuitions about the inability of "blind natural forces" (sic) to fill a gap that can only be filled with divine hocus-pocus. 

2. Anti-Junk DNA: There is no obliging need for theists to commit themselves one way or the other on this question; again, it must be on empirical grounds that this dispute is settled. Who can tell just what a contextually totalizing Being would or would not want to do with redundant/random coding in his DNA. My own uncompiled computer code is usually littered with the developmental legacy of historical but now redundant coding, so who knows what the Great Unknown of the Divine Mind might do. 

4. Information can't be created by "blind natural forces"? This is false: See here. Grumpy atheist PZMyers has recently & rightly taken NAID Stephen Myer to task on this one - see here: I have to roll my eyes when a creationist says information! Behind the NAID view on information generation is their subliminal "God-of-the-gaps" mentality; for them any sophisticated information becomes a "gap" incapable of being filled with "blind natural forces" and therefore demands deity intelligence to fill it. (*2)

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The notion that only enigmatic intelligence can create information may be based on the idea that somehow human intelligence should be categorized as a mysterious incomprehensible and transcendent process. To support this NAIDs may point to Roger Penrose's ideas about intelligence making use of non-computable processes.

I have critiqued Penrose's work here.  This work appears to have its origin in the fact that no finite system can fully be "self-aware". Full "self-awareness", for finite systems, opens up the potential for self-referencing contradictions. However, an outside perspective of an ontology external to a subject intelligence can be fully aware of the processes of that subject intelligence. 

Footnotes
*1 Christianity has a strong existential component in its evidences; that is, Christianity is partly dependent on the testimony of personal experiences. This slant toward anecdotal evidence, of course, cannot qualify as being on the same footing as the formal and sharable evidences of our science which depends on an a-priori high organization. 

*2 What I would concede however is that there is a cosmic sized "gap" everywhere and everywhen in as much as the descriptive nature of science is incapable of furnishing logical closure on the ultimate question of existence. 

*3 I also look askance at the mutual backslapping tribal culture that is the NAID community. This culture is not conducive to independent interest-free thinking;  it creates conflicts of interest.  It is probably true to say however that the gelling of their tribal culture has been encouraged by the vociferous and unfair opposition they have received from some quarters. See here

Current Projects

 I'm currently re-thinking and re-writing this project...

Quantum Non-Linearity: Signaled Diffusion Book IV: Real Numbers vs Complex Numbers

....and I'm also engaged in preparing material for the Church's Bible Course.. See here....

Norwich Churches and Belief Communities: Bible Course 2.0 Supplementary Resources

Hence, my posts won't be so frequent for a while. In the meantime this video looks interesting....

 

It's worth comparing the above video with Richard Carrier's misuse of probability when he reacts against this kind of material.

See also my notes on Bayes theorem and God

Atheist's Corner

Below are some quotes from a couple of UK's well known atheists; Alice Roberts and Brian Cox (*1). From their media appearances alone both come over as nice people. Although they are unlikely to have a great deal of respect for my own God seeking quest they strike me as polite people who would not be rude about it. But whatever! Let me now look at those quotes:

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ALICE ROBERTS:

MY COMMENT: I assume that by "non-religious people" Alice means people who don't kowtow to deities of any form and in any case have no proactive or practical belief in them. I don't know the history of non-belief myself but I'll take Alice's word for it that such people have always existed. I would nevertheless want to comment that my feel for history suggests that non-religious people of this ilk were usually in a minority, although this may not be true of modern Western societies. Moreover, it does seem that even in this modern age belief in deities or at the very least a mystical feeling that "there is something out there" is still very widespread; this fragment of observational evidence could be bundled together with other evidences to help build a case for theism. 

Where I get a bit stuck with Alice's statement is with the meaning of her natural phenomenon vs. supernatural side distinction. If we are working with the assumption that natural phenomenon refers to the patterns of our observations which conform to those highly organised and succinct principles we call "laws" then the natural phenomenon category is simply a construct of our definitions. This definition of the "natural world" as a regime of faithfully operating laws standing in contradistinction to deities has, I believe, only become really clear since the enlightenment. However, given this definition it is then very tempting to rule out the far less tractable world of exceptions to the rule, phenomenal erratics, the experientially bizarre and the startlingly unique as mistaken anomalies because their unmanageable infrequency compromises their sense of reality. So called natural phenomenon is then not just a passive category but a way of proactively sorting out the observational sheep from the goats.

But in any case the so called "natural world" with its remarkable and irreducible organization is in another very real sense highly supernatural; that is, its arbitrary contingency leaves me at least with the feeling of an unnatural contrivance. See in particular evolutionary theory. Crass attempts to trivialize this irreducibility by abusing probability theory or via multiverse concepts don't work for me. 

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BRIAN COX:

MY COMMENT: I wasn't aware this checking principle Brian refers to works as a catch-all principle even for natural phenomenon. Some objects subject to scientific checking such as paleontological, sociological, economic and historical theories, and in particular theories in evolutionary psychology where the intervening mists of time and other epistemic distance factors start to take effect make fact testing problematic. (See here).

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BRIAN: 

MY COMMENT: Well, yes Brian that is not only a very interesting question, but I would rate it as the most significant question of all. But I think Brian is going to have great difficulty answering such a question; for if as I think he has opined the only source of the meaning of life comes from what we personally invest in it then such subjectivity will ensure that life means different things to different people with the inevitable clashes of interest this will imply. 

Brian believes that the universe itself has no objective meaning of anthropic interest because all patterns and objects of interest are destined to die in the inevitable heat death of the universe. This cosmic destiny makes the elegant laws of physics as anthropically absurd as they are pointless.  

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MEANWHILE ON PZ MYERS' BLOG: 

PZ Myers is a really grumpy atheist; that may be because he's got various health issues. I can wish him better health although I won't pray for him as he probably hates the idea of prayer. But then who wouldn't be grumpy if you had to live in a country with a strong mix of Christian dominionists, quasi-fascists in powerful positions and a country which is the source of much Christian fundamentalist and anti-science thinking (like Ken Ham *2); and all that's before we get onto the subject of the breathtakingly egotistical D. Trump. On his blog post here PZ quotes a certain Mano Singham and then adds his own indorsing comment: See below (my emphases):

MANO SINGHAM: I left religion for purely logical reasons. not emotional ones. I found that however hard I tried, I just could not reconcile the scientific view that everything (?) occurs according to natural laws with the traditional religious view that seemed to require an entity that could bypass those laws to act in the world to change the course of events. It took me a long time to overcome the emotional attachment to the religious beliefs (and now he's emotionally attached to science? - ed) that I had. So while I can understand how logical reasoning can make one leave religion, (speak for yourself Mano - ed) I cannot see how it can drive the reverse process.... 

PZ MYERS:  Same here, except that my family faith tradition didn’t have much of an emotional attachment to Christianity, so shedding it was relatively trivial. I agree, though, that there are no good rational reasons to compel return to a faith, which is why I reject any attempts to rationalize it. It feels good to you, it connects you to friends and family, you have fond memories of your time in church (and makes sense of life? - ed) …that’s fine. I believe you. Go ahead, I’m not going to deny your feelings. But if you try to tell me you have compelling, logical, scientific reasons to believe in a god, I’m going to tell you you’re full of sh*t. (like I said, he's as grumpy as hell - ed)

MY COMMENT: Well, yes I'd agree; if you are expecting the verification of theism to be a simple case of testing as one might test accessible physical theories like Hooke's law or theories testable by test-tube precipitate then you won't find that kind of compelling "logical" scientific reason to believe in God. In fact testing for the existence of God, a totalizing personality in whose immanent being we are immersed, (Acts 17:27-28) is even more of an epistemic challenge than testing social, economic and historical theories. Much of the evidence relevant to God's existence revolves round personal anecdote, patchy historical documents, and above all a motivation to bring sense, meaning and purpose to both personal and community life. Perhaps that's what PZ is trying to express in his sentence above which I have emboldened. "God seeking" is an existential reaction whereby the individual seeks to find an all-embracing world view which provides meaning and purpose in life.  Christianity is a golden key which unlocks meaning and explains the human predicament.

The meaning of immanence: Pip, a computer games character,
wants to know where the computer simulating him dwells.

But here is the ironic twist: Just as the simple logic of a scientific  kind isn't sufficient to argue that theism is a logical truism, conversely neither is the elementary observational sampling which reveals very general laws a sufficient logical basis to argue one out of theism as Mano is proposing. If anything the strange & ultimately logically unjustifiable high organization which facilitates our expression of that order as those elegant mathematical laws of physics has a strange way of compelling us (at least myself) to start speculating about a logically true creating and sustaining context beyond them: After all, descriptive science cannot get round the impenetrable logical barrier of contingency; if we are looking for the underlying logic which supports the astounding & startling cosmic order we must look beyond that cosmos; at this point it is a very natural human instinct, in fact a very compelling intuition, to evoke the concept of God as Designer, Creator and Sustainer. But such a conclusion is a proprietary one, one which belongs to the individual; for example I myself cannot reconstruct those "purely logical reasons" (sic) which drove Mano Singham away from theism.

Mano's insistence that the existence of physical laws logically bar the existence of a creating and sustaining entity at whose pleasure the course of events may change capriciously betrays an obvious prejudice in his thinking. After all, few of us bulk at the idea that an otherwise fairly sound theoretical framework (like Newton's laws) may well under certain circumstance be bypassed in favour of a more general theoretical framework (like relativity or quantum mechanics), a framework which is the outer context in which less general patterns of behavior are immersed.  So, I take it that Mano only accepts exceptions to rule if they are the outcome of higher level laws. That is, he has an a priori prejudice which means he cannot accept a theistic outer framework. For him it is "turtles all the way down" where in his case the "turtles" are physical laws. For me, of course, the existence of those remarkable general laws governing a highly ordered cosmos has exactly the opposite effect; it drives me to theistic speculations. 

For Mano the unalterable natural laws cannot be bypassed and therefore he elevates them to a kind natural-law deism. So, conversely if PZ is going to accuse those who "try to tell me you have compelling, logical, scientific reasons to believe in a god, I’m going to tell you you’re full of sh*t." (and he might be right)  then does that mean if you try to tell me you have compelling, logical, scientific reasons to reject God, I’m going to tell you you’re full of sh*t? It would, however, be more polite and true to say that Mano's argument is based on innate gut reaction rather than logic. 

Footnotes

*1  Brian Cox appears to be in a mixed state of atheism and agnosticism: According Brian's Wiki page....

Brian Cox has stated he lacks a belief in deities and is a humanist, but he has sometimes rejected the label "atheist" in favor of saying he has "no personal faith". He has indicated he cannot be sure a God does not exist and that science cannot answer every question

*2  Young earthism is of course an ugly manifestation of Ken's fundamentalism. In young earthism God's created objects are sending out false messages about a history they never had. But even if God downloads created objects "as is" straight into creation, they each presumably are first assembled in the mind of God implying that even in Ken's "as is" creation objects have a history in the sense of a history in the divine mind. 

Physics' irreducible logical barrier

There's an isomorphism between data compression and the laws of physics: In the physical sciences observation collects "original data".(blue topped cylinder). Because the cosmos is highly organized this allows human theorizers (the "compressor") to describe its patterns of behavior in the form of succinct (or "compressed") mathematical laws (green cylinder).  We can then think of a physical system as a way of "decompressing" those laws and presenting us with our conscious experience of the world (orange topped cylinder). 

The laws of physics are mathematical devices which are effective because we live in a highly organized universe. This organization makes it possible to describe the patterns of the universe in the succinct forms we call the laws of physics. The opposite of this cosmic high organization is disorder or randomness which by definition eludes simple mathematical description. The purely descriptive role of mathematical science has been a big theme of this blog. See here for example.

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The following post, written by an Eric Hedin on the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) website "Science & Culture", looks to be an important conceptual step (forward?) for the NAID community...

 Can Equations Serve as a Designer Substitute? | Science and Culture Today

Am I interested in this post because it picks up on that same theme of the purely descriptive nature of physical science, although it appears to make no connection between the high organization of our experience of the world and the succinct mathematical formulations with which we find we can describe it. However, quoting from this post (with my emphases).....

This limitation (i,e, the descriptive nature of science) also applies to all the laws of physics that scientists have visualized, discovered, or derived. These “laws” merely describe how things work in this universe, based on our observations and experiments on what already exists.  "Physics is a mathematical exploration of the universe. We look for patterns, structures, symmetries, and relationships. We use math to capture and describe those patterns, structures, symmetries, and relationships." .....For example, Newton’s universal law of gravitation doesn’t cause an apple to fall from a tree, it simply describes the force between it and the Earth and the apple’s subsequent rate of acceleration towards the ground. No statement of the “law of gravity” has any power to produce the actors or the action in this simple drama.....These expostulations regarding the limitations of the utility of the laws of physics may seem obvious,

Yes, I agree, this lesson does seem obvious. The descriptive nature of science became obvious to me as soon as I was introduced to mathematical science...oh, about 55 years ago.  But it is surprising how many people seem unable to see this and believe the laws of physics have some much deeper "causative" role; for some people these laws are the metaphysical "why?" rather than the mere descriptive  "how". But descriptive mathematical science can never "self-explain"; the best it can do is compress its descriptive algorithms in increasingly succinct forms. But ultimately physics is destined to leave us with an incompressible kernel of apparently contingent information. 

If as Hedin appears to understand this hard core of contingency is irreducible this then opens up the question of the ultimate source or the  "why?" behind the cosmos, if indeed "why?" is an intelligible question. Mathematical physics is not self-referencing in way which means it contains its own explanation. In fact as atheist philosophers Bertrand Russell and Galen Strawson said the universe "just is" (*1)..... because human science can only rightly be expected to supply the "how" but not the deeper "why?" Russell and Strawson are telling us we just have to accept what it throws at us as the given status quo. For motivated atheists the question "why?", which if taken as a desire to find purpose and design behind the universe, is not only a meaningless question but also an anathema. 

But does the enigma of the impassible doorway where descriptive  science leaves us imply that a "designer" is to be found on the other side of that door, as Hedin suggests? Design arguments based on observations made in archeological contexts might suggest that via analogy design arguments are the next port of call in our thinking about cosmic origins. But I don't readily agree with the NAIDs who try to make out that the science of intelligent design, which does apply to archeological artifacts (and perhaps even alien technology) can automatically be extrapolated to the total cosmic context with its high organization. The concept of a totalizing God, who is the outer context in which a whole universe lives, moves and has its being (Acts 17:27-28), is an entirely different genus of entity to humans and aliens: The latter beings are intelligences which move & work within the contingent giveness of creation, as did the Greek gods of old. 

People like myself who propose a creator God are doing so on the basis of a design metaphor, rather than via the logic of ID science, a science which can only be worked out for intelligent agencies who work within the cosmic context.  For me what urges the use of this metaphor is an overwhelming sense that there must be anthropic meaning and purpose to be found on the other side of the enigmatic cliff hanger where descriptive science leaves us. Unless we are going to go along with the "just is" atheism of Russel and Strawson purpose and meaning can be found if we use Hebrews 11:6 as an axiomatic epistemic life principle.....

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

So, I largely agree with what Hedin says here..

To achieve “something rather than nothing” requires more than an equation, more than mathematics — it takes an intelligent mind to imagine what could be and, it would seem, the power of God to bring it to pass.

I can say "Yes" to that because my experience with sophisticated and highly organized configurations in this world does get me thinking along designer lines. But because the concept of "God" is of a totalizing entity in which the observable cosmos is immersed, the ID argument is at best an argument from analogy with a motivation based on largely theological urges & presuppositions and above all the search for purpose and meaning. 

As I discussed in this series of posts there is a feeling even among atheists like R. Carrier that there must be something out there, perhaps something we may find difficult to understand, which is a logical necessity and which is the source of our universe (*1); that source is not going to be descriptive algorithmic physics which inevitably leaves us at a logical hiatus. The status of algorithmic physics is as far as we know contingent; conceivably physics could be something other than what we know (*2). Hence the only way we can arrive at the physics of the universe and nail down the precise nature of its contingency is not through pure logic but through observation. I think this is what Hedin is trying to say here...

Even if an internally consistent theory of “quantum gravity” were developed, its correctness would remain in doubt. The reason is that the universe is contingent — it doesn’t have to play by our suppositions, and the only way to know for certain if any theory or model of nature is valid is to see if nature behaves according to its predictions.

Yes, I agree. But the "just is" atheism of Russel and Strawson, may regard it as futile, if not meaningless to pursue further explanatory aims that seek to answer "why?". It is ironic, however, that for the Christian Hebrews 11:6 suggests a similar "just is" attitude toward the reality of God himself. But in contrast to "just is" atheism (*3) Christian theology does help address the human yearning for ultimate justice, purpose and meaning and also helps fill that "God shaped hole" in our psyche. 

Footnotes

*1 At least Russel and Strawson are being coherent here. Compare that with Richard Carrier's absurd argument employing a bogus concept of probability as a kind logical truism capable of creating a universe. 

*2 Anthropic ideas, however, suggest that only a limited range of cosmic conditions favour a form of life advanced enough to make observations on the cosmos. 

*3 See also Brian Cox on the cosmic perspective.