Yet Again: Intelligence of the Gaps. Part 1

This intelligence-of-the-gaps model is still being used by
  the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) community
 although they will strenuously deny it. As a consequence all
 their eggs are in the anti-evolution basket

NAID thinker, Granville Sewell, is still using
 the God Intelligence-of-the-gaps model although
 like other NAIDs he will probably deny it.  

I have remarked before on the extreme unconditional improbability of evolution; so much so in fact that if evolution has actually occurred it would be Creation on Steroids. See here...

Quantum Non-Linearity: NAID Part IV: Evolution: Creation on Steriods

If evolution is at least a theoretical possibility then presumably for Christian theists the creation of such a mechanism of development would not be beyond the cognitive resources of an Omnigod (*1).  However, given that our cosmos appears to be a parallel processor rather than one with the capability of exponentially expanding parallelism it would seem that it must have required a heavy dollop of  "starting" or "implicit" information S, as demanded by this equation...

I <= S + Log T

equation 1

...where S is the starting/implicit information, T is the generation time and I the information generated. More about this equation  can be found at the end of this paper here. For conventional evolution to work (assuming it has occurred) S would have to be very large even given the space-time dimensions of our own observable cosmos. There is also the question of just where this implicit information resides: Is it just in the laws of physics and the possibly endless decimal places of its fine tuned constants? I don't claim to know. 

It is not absolutely clear, however, that evolution is even a theoretical possibility: For example it may be that NAID William Dembski is right: He suspects that organic forms employ "isolated" islands of functionality. If this is true then it would be a block to the necessarily gradualist diffusing process across configuration space that is the fundamental underlying mechanism of bog-standard evolution. Theological objections apart, in order to completely eliminate evolution from the inquiry one needs to...

a) Demonstrate mathematically its theoretical impossibility. 

And/Or...

b) Demonstrate that it's not in line with empirical evidence.

Even if it becomes clear that our cosmos supplies neither sufficient implicit information S nor sufficient time T to provision standard evolution it is just possible that some kind of expanding parallelism is being used to circumvent the very sluggish Log term in equation 1. Quantum Mechanics might obliquely hint at the existence of some sort of expanding parallelism but it's a long shot and I'm not going argue that here. 

What I would avoid, however, is the approach of NAID Granville Sewell who is still arguing that the second law of thermodynamics is a theoretical way of eliminating evolution from the inquiry. I'd be contented if he had really shown that evolution is off the agenda if it were not for the fact that he's part of a mutually back-slapping NAID tribe who are governed by a subliminal motivating quest to discover small-time gaps in evolutionary reasoning, gaps which they then fill with Divine intelligent interventions. That the laws of physics will ever remain a single huge impenetrable logical gap everywhere and everywhen is not something the NAID tribe is given to emphasize (see here Quantum Non-Linearity: Physics' irreducible logical barrier); instead NAID culture continues to tinker with what they believe to be the gaps in the natural history record, gaps for all we know, which might have been filled by little grey or green men....whereas the irreducible logical barrier of physics is of an entirely different genus to the gaps in "intelligence-of-the-gaps" and therefore demands an entirely different genus of entity to fill it. 

Behind the scenes NAID culture by and large identifies the creative entity as an Omnigod but plays this down in favour  of positing intelligence as a general creative agent (*3). This has lead them to promote the so-called explanatory filter which they use to detect the work of such agents. This explanatory filter has imposed on them an intelligence vs blind natural forces dichotomy and basically has led them up the garden path; this is because the filter works for beings like humans, animals and aliens(?) which are clearly entities who work within the created context, but the filter fails for a transcendent Omnigod;  such an entity has the potential to scupper any intelligence-of-the-gaps arguments: For if it is theoretically possible, an Omnigod may well fill in a logical gap with logic we have yet to understand. For example if we can't see how evolution could work, then as long evolution is theoretically possible, an Omnigod will presumably have the intellectual resources needed to make it work. In fact NAID culture has effectively  admitted as much: In this link... 

Quantum Non-Linearity: Misrepresenting North American Intelligent Design

....I quote a Science and Culture article as follows....

But the Avida genetic algorithm he references precisely shows the need for intelligence to build complexity. Avida uses “mutations” that are pre-programmed and intelligently engineered to yield great leaps in complexity, not blind “slight modifications” that Darwin’s theory requires. As pro-ID computer scientist Winston Ewert put it, Avida was “designed to evolve.” (*4)

Perhaps the cosmos has been designed to evolve.

***

This brings me back to Granville Sewell a NAID who has always maintained that the 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts evolution. True, it may well be that (as I have already observed)...

a) The evolutionary mechanism as we conceive it is theoretically impossible. 

And/Or....

a) Even if conventional evolution is theoretically possible it may or may not be the actual driving mechanism behind natural history; it then becomes an empirical question. 

But I can tell you this: Granville has not refuted evolution in either of these ways although he probably thinks he has. In fact he has just raised some interesting questions that I'm looking at in this series.

I would hazard that the subliminal/unspoken rationale behind Granville's endeavour is that of the NAID movement as a whole: Viz: an God intelligence-of-the-gaps philosophy - although they will likely deny it. All said and done I am myself an Intelligent Design Creationist (*2), so why aren't I looking for those small-time logical gaps in the mechanisms that drive natural history and which for many a NAID is the cause unifying their mutually back-slapping tribe? Well, it may be that such gaps exist but really these gaps pale when one realizes that physics is ever destined to be one big logical gap, everywhere and everywhen (Once again see here: Quantum Non-Linearity: Physics' irreducible logical barrier).

Entropy, contrary to Granville's opinion, is not necessarily connected with disorder. It is in fact a superset of disorder; it includes genuine disorder but because it is defined as the statistical weight of a macrostate. Such a state could be highly ordered in comparison with the absolute disorder of randomness and yet at the same time of maximum entropy. For example, if we have a heavily loaded die with 90% chance of landing a six then a long  sequence of throws with this die would, compared to absolute randomness, be highly organized; the statistical weight of a long sequence of throws with approximately 90% sixes is very low compared to the the statistical weight of the maximally random sequence of the unbiased die. But the sequence generated by the biased die is maximally disordered given the physical constraint of its bias. Putting it another way: The biased die generates a sequence of maximum entropy within the trammels of the physical constraint of the bias. But maximum entropy does not necessarily entail high disorder. Entropy comes in degrees and maximum disorder doesn't necessarily entail high randomness. A configuration could have maximum entropy but that doesn't necessarily mean it is highly disordered. Yes, I'm deliberately labouring the point, because it is clear that Granville doesn't understand it. 

 

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I will now go through Granville's post below which recently appeared on Science & Culture....

Life and the Principle Behind the Second Law | Science and Culture Today

GRANVILLE: Nevertheless, the second law is all about probability and there is something about the origin and evolution of life, and the development of human intelligence and civilization, that appears to many to defy the spirit, if not the letter, of the second law even if the Earth is an open system. There seems to be something extraordinarily improbable about life.

MY COMMENT: I would not say that the second law is all about probability. The second law is also about the probabilistic maximization of entropy within given physical constraints. It is certainly true that life is extraordinarily improbable if we are talking about the unconditional probability of life. But then it is also true that crystalline structures are extraordinarily improbable if we are talking about their unconditional probability. But with crystalline structures we do have more than an inkling of the conditions (i.e. the laws of physics) which The Creator has provisioned and which considerably enhances the conditional probability of crystals as a maximum entropy configuration. (Of course that's not to say that The Creator has actually contrived pre-conditions, if indeed such conditions are logically possible, which considerably enhance the conditional probability of the evolution of life as a maximum entropy configuration).

In conclusion: I would contradict what Granville states about the evolution of life defying the spirit of the second law..... if The Creator has provisioned suitable pre-conditions (if indeed such conditions are a mathematical possibility) then there is no defiance of the spirit of the second law; life would constitute a maximum entropy condition under the constraints supplied by The Creator. But of course whether The Creator has actually supplied such preconditions is the 64 trillion dollar question!

****

GRANVILLE: The second law of thermodynamics — at least the underlying principle behind this law — simply says that natural forces do not cause extremely improbable things to happen, [Rubbish!] and it is absurd to argue that because the Earth receives energy from the Sun, this principle was not violated here when the original rearrangement of atoms into encyclopedias and computers occurred. (my emphases)

MY COMMENT: NAID thinking is shot through with the assumption that somehow the physics of our world falls into this mystical category called "natural forces" and therefore can be discounted as utterly "blind" and with no creative efficacy. The obvious snag with this proto-pagan view is that those "natural forces" are The Creators creation and therefore it does no justice to them to describe them as blind natural forces; if I was feeling ill tempered I might say that it is bordering on faithless blasphemy to refer to those laws as such. 

As a general rule it is blatantly false to claim that that natural forces do not cause extremely improbable things to happen, There is of course the simple case of crystallization which as we've seen is an entropy maximization process whose unconditional probability is all but zero - the unconditional probability of a crystal is like throwing a million heads in a row. I would hasten to grant, however, that highly organised crystal configurations are one thing but the configurations of life are quite another; but at this stage given the presence of huge Divine intellectual resources those providential so-called "natural forces" (sic) created by The Creator are a wild card and this means that as far as we are concerned, we are not yet at the stage where evolution can be categorically eliminated from the inquiry.    

To see what can be done with the right kind of information lets consider embryo growth. Restating equation 1.....

 I <= S + Log T

equation 1

Embryo growth starts with a large burden of implicit information S in the form of DNA strings and other cellular manufacturing paraphernalia (not to mention the laws of physics). Nevertheless a certain amount of time T is still needed to complete the development work as governed by the DNA recipes. The point, however, is this: The process of embryo development entails imposing high organization on large quantities of matter and yet at no stage is the 2nd law violated. In principle it is possible to construct a boundary of isolation round the embryo development system and include within that boundary all that embryo development is going to need in terms of the output/input of energy & matter and then make sure that nothing passes that boundary. We can then think in terms of an isolated boundaried system and forget about negentropy imports from the outside. What we do know is that in this isolated system overall entropy will increase, even though the miracle of embryo development entails imposing highly organized configurations on macroscopic quantities of matter; this is the miracle of cellular machinery, DNA and the laws of physics which together constitute the information in S.  The miracle here is that this system generates huge pockets of high organization and yet as a whole entropy increases; in short embryo growth is a entropy maximisation process. The other thing to note is that random diffusion plays a big part in assembling the necessary molecular configurations......The initial molecular machinery represented by S has the effect of locking-in diffused matter and energy into the growing molecular configurations. It achieves this with what is in effect a trial-&-error search facilitated by the thermal agitations of random walk. Thus S entails a mathematical constraint which biases the random agitations of random walk and it does this by selecting only those molecular unions which fit the templates implicit in S.

Of course this observation is no proof that bog-standard evolution is actually the real-life mechanism of natural history but it does set up a challenging precedent for intelligence-of-gaps thought and the NAID community who have put all their eggs into the anti-evolution basket. For if (repeat, if) evolution has occurred as we understand it, it shares with embryo growth a similar balance of S and T.... If standard evolution is to work without the help of expanding parallelism the cosmic value of S must be large enough to develop what are in fact highly complex living configurations given that the cosmos is in effect only a parallel processor operating for time T; the huge unconditional improbability of living configurations means that the visible dimensions of cosmic time and space, though they seem enormous to us, are no match for life's immense unconditional improbability. 

Well OK that's no proof of standard evolution, but let me stress again that the weakness of NAID is that it has put all its eggs into the anti-evolution basket, which means the NAID community is tribally committed to a single cause; namely, agitating against a hostile academia's evolutionary consensus. NAID's riposte to academia is that evolution just can't happen because it relies on "blind natural forces" (sic) ...but what a pagan way to describe the providences of God's creation!

****

GRANVILLE: In a 2000 Mathematical Intelligencer article2 I claimed that The second law of thermodynamics — at least the underlying principle behind this law — simply says that natural forces do not cause extremely improbable things to happen, and it is absurd to argue that because the Earth receives energy from the Sun, this principle was not violated here when the original rearrangement of atoms into encyclopedias and computers occurred.

One reader noted in a published reply to my article that any particular long string of coin tosses is extremely improbable, so my statement that “natural forces do not cause extremely improbable things to happen” is not correct. This critic was right, and I have since been careful to state (for example in a 2013 BIO-Complexity article4) that the underlying principle behind the second law is that Natural (unintelligent) forces do not do macroscopically describable things that are extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view. (My emphases)

MY COMMENT: Granville goes on to define macroscopically describable things in terms of algorithmic information theory... content I certainly wouldn't dispute! In short macroscopically describable things are highly organized configurations of billions of atoms, where this particulate organization is such that it allows algorithmic data compression to take place (See this link and my work on Disorder and Randomness). So, I was pleased to find Granville talking some sense at last. But that pleasure was offset by the statements I've emphasized in the quote above where he "blasphemously" (!?) refers to God's providences as blind and unintelligent natural forces (*Gasp!*).  And yet we know that given the right kind of S and T those "blind forces" (sic) can create highly organised macroscopic configurations in the form of embryos & crystals and yet at the same time without violation of the 2nd law.  Of course I'd accept that it's too much of a stretch to automatically extrapolate this to evolution; but if evolution as we understand it has occurred it displays a similar balance of S and T as I've already remarked. 

****

GRANVILLE: This principle is very similar to William Dembski’s observation that you can identify intelligent agents because they are the only ones that can do things that are “specified” (simply or macroscopically describable) and “complex” (extremely improbable) [That's the first time I've seen a clear cut definition of  so-called "specified complexity" a term bandied about by the NAID rank and file is if they know what they are talking about]. Any box full of wires and metal scraps could be said to be complex, but we only suspect intelligence has organized them if the box performs a complex and specifiable function, such as “playing DVDs.”

MY COMMENT: A nice slap on the back there for William Dembski from fellow NAID Granville! Yes, I too would  acknowledge that the incredible feats of macroscopic organization, in particular the mathematically elegant laws of physics, are very intuitively compelling re. intelligent design. My theological intuitions that this points to Divine providence are as strong as any. The alternative of a fluky random universe are, as Sherlock Holmes observed in the story of The Cardboard Box, unthinkable (See the introduction to Disorder and Randomness). The work of Divine providence is even more compelling when one sees the botched job that arrogant atheist Richard Carrier has done in trying to explain it all in terms of randomness. Further intuitive compulsion is added when we see how nice-boy atheist Brian Cox offers his thoughts on his Godless empty vision of cosmic destiny: Viz:

In 10 trillion years the last star will fade. The universe becomes a void without light, life or meaning. The darkness will last forever. As the stars fade so does all possibility of life and meaning.

But what I bulk at with NAIDs like Granville is that they will have a real headache on their hands if it it ever turns out that physics is logically complete: That is, that it's algorithmic descriptions not only cover basic physical phenomena but also the evolution of life and moreover the workings of the human brain. They would then have no small-time gaps for their intelligence-of-the-gaps plug-ins to get a purchase on.

Nevertheless I must add the caveat that I'm not committed to the notion of the logical completeness of the laws of physics, but neither am I committed to a denial of that completeness. Unlike Brian Cox and the NAIDs I'm not going to put all my theoretical eggs into one basket. But for me there remains some very basic intuitions... theological intuitions expressed in the likes of Psalm 8, Psalm 19 and Psalm 139....... 

When I consider your heavens,

    the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

    which you have set in place,

what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

    human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8)

 

The heavens declare the glory of God;

    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

    night after night they reveal knowledge.

They have no speech, they use no words;

    no sound is heard from them.

Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,

    their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19)

For you created my inmost being;

    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

    your works are wonderful,

    I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you

    when I was made in the secret place,

    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

    all the days ordained for me were written in your book

    before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

    How vast is the sum of them!

Were I to count them,

    they would outnumber the grains of sand –

    when I awake, I am still with you. (Psalm 119)

****

The perennial fault of the NAID community is that they don't acknowledge that the theology of a totalizing & transcendent Omnigod creator leads one to a very different form of theological logic to that of the explanatory filter which only caters for in-house created intelligences like humans, animals and little green men.  But I would acknowledge that the NAID community do have mitigating circumstances: In the highly polarized political environment of the US some of the academic community have treated NAID theorists like an unclean plague. As I've remarked before this has pushed the NAID community into the embracing arms of some very vicious right-wing idealogues and demagogues; like Donald Trump for instance.

****

In the next episode I will have a look at Granville's open system reasoning where he considers the transport of negentropy across an open boundary and doubts that this explains increasing configurational order - not the way I would do it personally as I prefer the closed system approach that I've used above; but lets see what he has to say....

...to be continued.

Footnotes

*1 It needs to be pointed out here that whatever the logical and empirical status of standard evolutionary mechanisms some people may have overriding theological issues with evolution which makes it impossible for them to accept. 

*2 But it is likely I would not be a good fit for the so-called "libertarian" political ideology and conspiracy theorism which pervades the NAID community: Recall types like Charlie Kirk.  This is ironic as I've always thought of myself as a free-market-loving liberal minded constitutional monarchist. But polarization has so set-in that I probably look like a raving communist to the Trumpite/Kirkist/Randist/Faragist/Hamite far-right and a capitalist running dog to the Marxist far-left!

*3 The NAID community continue in the affectation that their thesis about intelligent design is not a theological one but a scientific one and therefore their concept of "intelligent agency" masquerades as a purely scientific concept that can be tested for in scientific ways. This is certainly true if we are dealing with the agency of humans, animals or aliens who work within the implicit information (S) of the physical world. But if we move over to the agency of an Omnigod the question of intelligent agency becomes much more tricky, theological and intuitive. This is a consequence of the transcendent Christian Omnigod being both eminent and immanent to creation (Acts 17:28).  So in principle one might think that the NAID community is a broad church that opens it's doors to anyone who accepts their thesis of non-transcendent intelligent agency, but somehow I doubt that's the case. I suspect that even someone like myself would be persona non grata to the NAID tribe. 

*4 See these links:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Darwin Bicentenary Part 11: William Demski’s Active Information

Quantum Non-Linearity: Darwin Bicentenary 14: Active Information and Evolution

Quantum Non-Linearity: Darwin Bicentenary Part 19: Dembski's Active Information Continued...

ADDENDUM 30/06/2026

A rather politically sinister post has appeared on Science & Culture by Granville Sewell. Viz:

On the Road: The Science of Design in an American Context | Science and Culture Today

In this article Granville gives credit to the virtues of the American Declaration of Independence but without mention of important contexts: Viz:

1. The role of the English Civil war in giving historical rhetoric to the American cause. One could go even further back to the ground work of the Provisions of Oxford and the Magna Carta. Also the input of the European Enlightenment and the English industrial revolution need consideration.

2. The current US context of the democratic backsliding of the MAGArite movement and the banana republic style rule of the pathological narcissist D J Trump. The "stolen election" of 2020 were Trump lies supported by the likes of Mike Pompeo.

Let's also beware of the hazard of both "Christian" internationalism and nationalism: Christendom under the Popes was oppressive; ask Wycliffe and Tyndale. English Christian nationalism under the Stuart destiny was highly oppressive for Non-conformists until William of Orange (1688) and the eventual repeal of the Test Act in 1828. Catholics were also oppressed by over fervent English Christian nationalism. And while we are here let me mention a certain Mr. V Putin whose version of Christian nationalism might have some appeal for MAGArites such as Steve Bannon & Stephen Miller. Let's also beware of too idealistic interpretations of Adam Smith, interpretations which for the Western Irish subsistence farmers of the 19th century only exacerbated their terrible suffering. 

The Boston Tea Party and the American revolution were not some super-duper Christian revolution emerging from no-where; it had background - a lot of background in Europe. 

Granville is not only silent about the above contexts but also about the corrupt Christian nationalism of MAGArism and Trump. He is therefore in my view complicit. It may well be that as with someone like Ken Ham the interests of NAID are being quietly served by MAGArism and vice versa.

Motivated Atheism

Motivated atheism: "We don't want none of that God business here, thankyou very much!"

                From: Viewpoint: What 'New Atheists’ get wrong about science and religion - Genetic Literacy Project

Does Humanity Need a God Who Doesn’t Exist? asks fundamentalist theme park supremo Ken Ham in a blog post dated December 2025. After posing the question Ken goes on to say....

KEN: Is God just (Note the "Just" here) an evolutionary necessity? I was recently sent an article titled “The God Construct: Why Humanity Needed God Though God Need Not Exist.”  The abstract of this “atheistic, scientific-philosophical perspective” applied to the idea of God says:

This article argues that humanity created the concept of God to address deep psychological and social needs, even though no empirical evidence requires a God’s existence. Drawing on the philosophy of religion and cognitive science, we demonstrate that belief in gods arises from evolved cognitive byproducts (e.g., hyperactive agency detection and theory of mind) and existential motives (such as meaning, order, and comfort in the face of death and suffering). From an atheistic, scientific-philosophical perspective, we contend that God is a cultural construct (‘man needs God’) rather than a necessary metaphysical being. Logical analysis (e.g. the problem of evil (But see here) and ontological arguments) supports God’s non-necessity, while empirically humans with strong God-belief report greater purpose and reduced death anxiety (Cranney 2013). We argue that religion fulfilled survival functions (community cohesion, moral regulation) but did so via God-concepts as symbolic projections. In sum, the God-idea met human needs, not vice versa. This thesis is supported by interdisciplinary evidence from evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and analytic philosophy. [emphases added]

MY COMMENT: Ironically I don't necessarily disagree with much of that abstract! If for the moment I put on my evolutionary hat (which I don't wear all the time) then I can accept that humans have evolved in such a way that their cognitive, temperamental and emotional needs precipitated an existential crisis which motivated a search for meaning & purpose and ultimately led to the construction of concepts of divinity in various forms; hence the jargon "cultural construct". I would also accept that as far as limited human understanding is concerned God has no known logical necessity. But what about "empirical necessity"? - more on that subject in a bit.

But, and here is the big "but", an evolutionary account explaining the human need for the divine can be taken as empirical evidence which is readily incorporated into a theistic world view. Viz: From the theistic evolutionists world view it is easy to claim that the evolution of the "God shaped hole", a void which humanity seeks to fill, is God's way of revealing himself to the evolved world.  In short, yes, the divine is a cultural construct, but is it only a cultural construct? (See Romans 2:14ff for more)

Ironically, the thesis in the above abstract may not actually be that popular among some motivated atheists. Why? Well, its tantamount to admitting that theism is not some random human foible of relatively recent social origin but a deeply ingrained human trait inextricably intertwined with evolution; a product of an emerging conscious cognition capable of self-awareness, self reflection and in need of existentialist assurance.

***

I wonder if the author of the abstract really understands empiricism and the role of evidence? All evidence is subject to interpretation (*1); it is just that some of the simpler and very accessible ontologies (like Hooke's law and chemical precipitates) provide us with prolific empirical evidences at will; the high organization of this empirical data then allows us to incorporate natural information in succinct laws.  

As we move from elementary ontologies to more complex and  less accessible ontologies, such as human beings themselves, their societies and their histories, and their cosmogonies etc. the vexed question of how to interpret sparse and less accessible data comes very much to the fore. And if that is true of commonplace objects (albeit objects which are very complex and of greater epistemic distance) then we would expect it to be even more true, if it exists, of the Transcendent.  I discuss this more fully elsewhere: See here for example. Compounding the problem is that evidences for God are often found in private experiences and epiphanies that are not easily shared. 

God's apparent lack of logical necessity is true as far as we are concerned but this may be down to a perspective effect of finite cognition and epistemic limitations. These limitations prevent us  from wrapping our minds around a full understanding of God thus thwarting human attempts to appreciate his logical necessity. When it comes to ultimate origins this problem even surfaces in atheism....

In my series on conceited blowhard Richard Carrier we found even him accepting that beyond what appears to us as the unnecessary contingency of our own cosmos there are logical truths out there which cannot be done away with. Therefore he argued that the cosmos didn't come from nothing; at the very least certain logical truths hold eternally, although he at first left open exactly what those logical truths are. But he then went on to erroneously use probability theory as if it were one of those logical truisms, thus allowing him to generate universes at random. But while his identification of what is logically true was in error, the idea that the universe is created and upheld by some underlying logical truism is not out of the way.... although I would regard attempts like Anselm's ontological argument and the first cause argument as weak and even invalid proofs of God's existence... but I have great sympathy with the underlying motivation to get at the logical truisms behind the cosmos. 

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Now let's see how Ken reacts...

KEN: In other words, there’s no convincing evidence that God exists; but we needed him, so sometime in our evolutionary past, mankind invented a God or gods to serve our purposes. But do you realize that, in making his argument, this atheistic author has already defeated his very premise? Okay, what do I mean by that?

Well, he admits his research comes from an atheistic perspective: He believes everything is material and everything evolved by materialistic (non-supernatural) processes over many millions of years. In this worldview, there cannot be anything immaterial. And yet he is applying logic and reason to make his arguments. But logic and reason are not material! They are immaterial . . . and the immaterial can’t exist in his own worldview. (emphases added)

MY COMMENT: It is simply not clear to me what is meant here by materialism and materialistic processes.  In my view such notions are incoherent and it is likely they have their origins in the bogus God vs natural forces dichotomy; they are crypto-deist categories. I've argued against this sham paradigm many times in connection with the North America Intelligent Design (NAID) community (See here). It is no surprise to see that Ken has been influenced by this error. 

Material objects, so called, exist because the high organization of our sense data allows us to mathematically and logically define material objects such as stars, planets, people, minds, computers, atoms, and fundamental particles etc. geometrically; "materialism" does not make sense without the use of mathematics and logic. Beyond those mathematical constructions we are hard put to it to identify the true nature of the thing-in-itself which supports the high organization of our experience. For Christians of course that thing-in-itself is, whatever its ontological nature, created and sustained by God. 

Because of Ken's undefined use of the term "material", Ken's statement that  logic and reason are not material! They are immaterial . . . and the immaterial can’t exist in his own worldview is unintelligible. It is the very organization of the creation which facilitates our notion of logic. Ergo, an atheist too can appreciate logic and reason although atheism would not, of course, attribute the origin of that organization to a rational creator God. For example the atheist  Galen Strawson (who has no idea where it all came from), as a last resort throws up his hands and declares that the organized cosmos "just is". Well, Christians (such as myself) can't really complain too strongly about that because for us God himself "just is" as per Hebrews 11:6. 

In the above quote from Ken, we find him, as is his wont, yet again putting his own ideas into the mouths and minds of an antagonist - a bad habit of his whether his antagonist is a Christian or atheist. (See here and here for example).

***

KEN: In a chance, random universe, laws of logic that apply to everyone everywhere don’t make sense. Why would randomness produce immaterial laws that don’t change? In order to make his argument, this atheist has to borrow from a biblical worldview because it is only the eternal God of the Bible, who is logically consistent, never changes, and can account for laws of logic. He is borrowing from the very worldview (or theism, at least) that he is arguing against! The very fact that he can argue at all shows he is wrong.

MY COMMENT: Defining randomness is itself quite a challenge in logic; randomness certainly doesn't do away with logic; in fact it needs logic to be understood. But I think I get what Ken is trying to say here: Randomness is the antithesis of the high organisation which facilitates the enunciation of those very successful laws of nature. If that's what Ken really means then its true those laws make the natural world an intelligible place and make logic possible. But beyond those descriptive laws the deeper logical reason for the cosmos remains an enigma, not withstanding Richard Carrier's botched philosophy of probability. As Galen Strawson appears to acknowledge that's where atheism's questions hit an impenetrable barrier.

I'd accept what Ken is trying say in as much Christianity has played a role in helping us to have confidence in the stability, organisation, rationality and consequent knowability of the cosmos. This is the a priori epistemic feature which motivates science. 

***

KEN:  We didn’t invent God. God exists outside of time and space. He created us by the power of his word and then revealed himself to us through his perfect Word and his Son, Jesus Christ, who came to offer his own life in our place so we could be forgiven and spend eternity with him.

MY COMMENT:  I can run with the gist of that Ken, even though you would likely classify me as a pagan. (I'm generally much more generous to cultists than they have any hope of reciprocating that generosity) However, if evolution made the invention of God an existential necessity for searching, seeking humankind it's an invention that not only worked but has revealed The Big Secret behind the universe. 

*** 

KEN: And don’t forget, man can’t escape the fact that “that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, both His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:19–20 LSB).

MY COMMENT:  Well Ken, if I temporarily put my evolutionary hat on, it could be plausibly maintained that the writer of the paper, in a back handed way, concedes one point; namely that that which is known about God is evident within them......etc., but he is proposing that this knowledge has emerged evolutionarily. Of course Ken doesn't believe in evolution but for Christians who are evolutionists this paper can be seen as an acknowledgement that humanity's innate awareness of the numinous comes from deep rooted whisperings within. 

But not everyone responds positively to those whisperings: For one thing is clear however, and Ken may well agree, the writer of this paper is likely to be highly motivated toward atheism; that is, he wants atheism to be true and thus he casts around for arguments which fit this a priori belief; much like Ken does for his a priori beliefs!

Footnote

*1 The view I express here is similar to but is certainly not the same as Ken's bigoted presuppositionalism. Human beings most often work abductively, trying to fit the evidence to some a priori world view which (hopefully) successfully interprets that evidence. But unlike Ken's quasi-cult artistry which motivates him to threaten all but damnation on antagonists, our world views should not be regarded as immutable; if a world view struggles to make sense of the cosmos (such as YEC, flat earth theory, conspiracy theories etc.) then it must be abandoned and a new world view developed. Contrast that with the absurdities of YEC fundamentalism which according to Ken must be held onto on pain of all but excommunication from the faith.

Examining Mr. R. Carrier's use of Bayesianism. Part III

My apologies for having to display this theology!

This is Part III of my series where I'm looking at the following post by a Mr. Richard Carrier...

Why the Fine Tuning Argument Proves God Does Not Exist • Richard Carrier Blogs

See here for the other parts: Part I & Part II. In the last part of this series, we left Richard wanting to take cognizance of all the evidence relevant to the question of the origin of the creation's "fine-tuning" constants.....

***

RICHARD: The real problem here is that this leaves out pertinent evidence. Because we are here testing two competing hypotheses to explain observations: either (A) chance accident produced that alignment of constants or (B) someone or something intelligently selected them.

MY COMMENT: As we saw in part II this statement of the problem isn't coherent; the big question about so-called fine-tuning isn't just confined to a few constants, but a highly improbable physical regime (calculated unconditionally) governed by unique organizing principles of which the so-called fine-tuning constants are just one aspect. Richard should be asking if these principles are a chance accident, and if so that takes us into the question of whether there is an infinite sea of randomness out there of which our highly organized universe is but a very, very tiny corner of chance occurrence. But as we saw in the last part there is no evidence for our observable cosmos being an unimaginably tiny part in a random superverse, what you might call the "Big R" hypothesis.

Anyway, here's Richard's conclusion to his question and it is clear that his theological assumptions as to how "gods" are supposed to work drive this conclusion (my emphases)....

***

RICHARD: So when we bring all the pertinent evidence back in, the evidence indicates support not for Theory B (intelligent design), but for Theory A (chance accident). Fine Tuning is therefore evidence against intelligent design. It could never be evidence for it, because gods don’t need fundamental constants at all, much less all the weird ones we have. No intelligent agent needs quarks or electrons or electromagnetism or even gravity—things can just behave as commanded or designed: where things need to fall, they just fall; where stars need to shine, they just shine; where things need to stick together, they just stick together. One might respond that, still, it is possible an intelligent engineer would choose all these weird and unnecessary ways to create and sustain life. But that is fully accounted for here. What matters is not whether it’s possible. What matters is how probable it is. 

Because: If (a) we exist and (b) God did not design the universe, then (c) we should expect to observe several things, and lo and behold, those are exactly the things we observe; yet we do not expect to observe those things if God did design the universe. By definition that which is expected on x is probable on x; that which is unexpected on x is improbable on x. So if the evidence is probable if God does not exist and improbable if God exists, then that evidence argues against God, not for God.

Hence what matters is not what’s possible. What matters is its relative probability. In the case of Theory A, the probability of all these observations (the vast age, the vast size, the vast quantity of lifeless content, the vast lethality of the universe; and the bizarrely long, meandering, particular way life arose and developed into observers asking these questions) is essentially 100%. And you can’t get “more” than 100%. It’s as likely as likely can ever be. These observations are therefore maximally probable on Theory A. By contrast, none of these observations are at all expected on any plausible theory of intelligent design. Indeed, they are on Theory B predicted not to be observed.

MY COMMENT: In the above I have no issue with the core idea of conditional probabilities; namely that the probability of an outcome can be considerably enhanced if the conditions x or evidence x implies that it is a favored outcome.  Where the issue lies is with Richard's rather subjective assessment of what constitutes favourable evidence and/or conditions for his atheism. Take a look at the following......

In my short monograph on Forster's and Marston's (F&M) application of Bayes theorem to the question of God's existence I interpreted their use of probabilities in frequentist terms (itself a debatable maneuver) using this Venn diagram: 

Here the overwhelming number of cases favouring a habitable cosmos represented by "H" are found among the cases where there is an intelligent creator represented by the area "G".  If one is to accept this diagram (debatable!) it is then a trivial Bayesian calculation to show that given conditions/evidences "H" then it implies that the probability of God is almost unity. 

Now let's do the same for Richard's take on the situation. Interpreted in frequentist terms, he's saying this:

Richard's view is that our cosmos, with its huge volume of space-time sterile to life, can barely be claimed to be habitable and moreover to him the cosmos seems all very random; hence for Richard our cosmos lies somewhere in the region above labelled with "R".  According to Ricard, then, our cosmos is hardly the sort of affair that an intelligent and wise designer would create and therefore in his assessment region R has a very small overlap with region G. So, given this assumption of his, it then trivially follows that conditions/evidence labeled by "R" imply atheism with a probability of all but 100%. 

Clearly then F&M and Richard draw opposite conclusions from the evidence of the cosmos.  And it's not as if F&M, although Christians, are out and out antievolutionists after the manner of the right-wing North American Intelligent Design (NAID) community.  But let me say this: As we saw in Part II Richard seems to have underestimated the miracle of organization that is our observable cosmos and over emphasizes the role of randomness. I see the habitability of the cosmos, evolution or no evolution, as a very big deal indeed and not just a fluke of unadulterated randomness; I see Richard's vision of a bizarro "Big-R" superverse as not only hopelessly meaningless, but also lacking evidence. So, although I have to admit to feeling rather insecure about the use of Bayes to God, whether I was atheist or theist, I'm probably more on the side of F&M than I am that of Mr. Richard Carrier. 

As we will see below Richard's argument is based on his a priori theological conceptions and what he thinks (wrongly as it turns out) the way engineers who create stuff should work (my emphases):

***

RICHARD: Intelligent engineers aiming to create life don’t make the laboratory for it vastly larger and older and more deadly than is required for the project. Indeed, unless those engineers intend to convince that life that they don’t exist, they don’t set up its habitat to look exactly like a habitat no one set up. This is the least likely way they would make a universe. But set that point aside. The conclusion already sufficiently follows from the first point: there is no reason to expect God to have made the universe this way. It cannot be predicted that this is what a God would produce, or that it is what he would want to produce. Whereas it is exactly 100% predicted to be what we’d see if there was no God. So no matter what you try to propose, you can never get that probability to be 100% if there was a God. You can propose all sorts of excuses, all sorts of “maybes,” but you will never be able to prove those proposals to be 100% certain to be true. There will always be some significant probability that those “excuses” simply aren’t true, that God simply doesn’t have your imagined motives or limitations. And indeed, when there is no evidence for or against any one such motive or limitation, its probability simply is 50%. It’s as likely as not.

MY COMMENT: Well, OK I can accept that Richard should draw parallels between divine creation and what he thinks human engineers do in the act of creation. After all, human engineering is something we have experience of; where else do we get our evidence from? We can only use our experience, and any intuitions based on that experience to probe the question of a divine intelligent designer and creator.

But when Richard says above that the kind of universe we see is exactly 100% predicted to be what we’d see if there was no God. is that actually true? 

As I've already said in Part II the cosmos, whether current theories of evolution are correct or not, is a remarkable piece of work that is far, far from the "Big-R" that Richard gives every impression he thinks it is; it is in fact a highly organized system of surprising contingencies, organized contingencies of very low statistical weight and therefore of very low unconditional probability. So, unless we are rather taken with Richard's Bizarro Big-R superverse concept, the observable cosmos is a most singular and arresting piece of construction.  But just how was it created if it is not part of a Big-R superverse? Let's see....

***

Some years ago I was reading a book by a rather foolish fundamentalist Biblical literalist and I read these lines: 

.. the Bible teaches that the stars were created in an instant of time at the verbal command of God (Psalm 33:9). It is an awesome thought that God needed only to speak a word and billions upon billions of stars instantly appeared." (p15)

"... God supernaturally and instantaneously created the stars on the fourth day of creation" (p24)

"When we read of God's supernatural and instantaneous method of creation we must stand in awe of Him." (p34)

"When we consider God speaking the vast Universe of stars into existence, we can do nothing but stand in awe of Him"

This Biblical literalist is quite sure he knows the vital property distinguishing "natural" processes from "supernatural" action - it is of course that creators create their creations instantaneously by means of the pronouncement of suitable magic words. In commenting on Proverbs 8:27-30 where we read about God invoking wisdom as the craftsman of creation he concludes "God did not use evolution because a craftsman carries out instantaneous and deliberate actions whereas evolution involves a long random process" (p31). However, there are two glaring errors here: 1) Craftsmen don't create instantaneously. 2) To call evolution "random" is a gross misrepresentation. This literalist is captive to a false dichotomy: Viz: He contrasts what he believes to be the very random processes of evolution with what he feels are the instantaneous and deliberate acts of the craftsman. The irony is that Richard's views in terms of the concepts he employs aren't a lot different: As we've seen he is impressed by the notion of a Big-R universe. Moreover, take a look at the following which I've already quoted from Richard in a previous section of this post....

No intelligent agent needs quarks or electrons or electromagnetism or even gravity—things can just behave as commanded or designed: where things need to fall, they just fall; where stars need to shine, they just shine; where things need to stick together, they just stick together.

That is, in the mindset of both our Biblical literalist and Richard Carrier divine creation should entail no underlying logic, no process and no history; things just happen just-like-that, abracadabra style. Basically, the caricature of divine creation conceived by both Richard and our Biblical literalist is that the act of creation is brute magic.  Richard and our literalist just can't conceive that God might use the resources of time and space (humanly speaking huge amounts of them) as a demonstration of the process and computational cost needed to create life. For them God is a magician who merely commands stuff into existence and Richard's theological notions in terms of concepts employed doesn't look to be a great advancement on the Biblical literalist.

We cannot but help notice that our Biblical literalist is as laughably wrong as anyone can be about the actions of a craftsman; those actions are certainly not instantaneous; if they were we might justifiably accuse the craftsmen of being magicians in league with Devil. In fact, in some ways the work of the craftsman resembles the inconceivably more sophisticated work in the womb; that is, a stage-by-stage process moving incrementally closer to an end product as time progresses. These stages proceed against a background of inherent dependencies, e.g. a craftsman can't make a silver candlestick until some silver has been smelted and an embryo can't develop without a union of the appropriate genetic components not to mention the underlying organic chemistry fundamental to all living things. Of course, it is easy to claim that an omniscient omnipotence could create in one grand slam instantaneous act a fully mature human, but the sequential dependencies I talk of here are conceptually fundamental. A silver candlestick depends on the existence of silver but silver is not obliged to exist in the form of a silver candlestick. Likewise, humans depend on a prerequisite organic chemistry which itself depends on more fundamental conditions such as the construction of atoms. There is a forced logical sequence here that we cannot escape from whether we believe in instantaneous creation or not. If God instantaneously created a mature object that would not detract from the fact that the object itself may have inherent sequences of logical dependencies.

Some concept of sequence, then, is built into things no matter how they are arrived at. But the sequencing we see in embryo growth and artifact construction is much stronger than this "dependency" sequencing. Both processes pass through a series of stages separated by increments. Each stage is usually a little closer to the final product; although this is not necessarily true in the case of the craftsmen art where sometimes a search for solutions means backtracking may occur. But the fundamental aspect of both is the incremental separation between stages. The end product is the result of an accumulation of these incremental changes. The common theme is that of a quasi-continuity of change; you pass from one state to another through a series of intermediate states, thereby forming an incremental sequence of change. I would not, however, want to use the generic term "gradualism" here because some processes like, say, an explosion, is both incremental and yet very rapid. The key notion is one of at least an approximate continuity of change in as much as successive stages are only separated by relatively small displacements.

But we must take our faulting of both Richard and our Biblical literalist yet another stage further. As we know the process of designing is also a "search" process, an experimental trial and error endeavor that in some cases has definite goals in mind and in other cases involves chance discoveries that are perceived to have utility and only then are selected to become part of the technological tool kit. There is also the complex cognitive thought process occurring in the mind of the designer, which although not visible are all part of the experimentalism as ideas are mulled over in the mind and either rejected or selected for realized reification in material technology. 

All these factors combine to give us an exponentially branching network which constitutes a potentially huge search space making the space-time of the observable cosmos look like a very tiny place indeed. But the search space is considerably reduced if the creator is primed with an informational head start; that is, if the creator has useful a priori knowledge. The form of the equation which relates the information content of the configurations created as a function of starting information and the minimum possible number of computational search steps looks something like this: 

I = S + Log T

Equation 1

Where I is the information content of a configuration arrived at, S is the minimum length of the algorithm/knowledge needed to generate the configuration using a minimum number of linear execution steps of T. See here where I give more details on this relation.  (See also here).  This relation tells us that a creative agent/process can take a lot less time if that agent has a large amount of primal starter information S. But assuming a parallel processing paradigm then when S is lacking content information in I is generated only very slowly with Log of the number of execution steps T. 

It is a strong theological intuition that a proper concept of God entails an omniscient being and therefore One who has a full quota of S and hence has little need of the generation steps T. I guess that it is this intuition which influences our fundamentalist and Richard both of whom are quite sure that when it comes to creation brute omni-power means that God can just do stuff all but instantaneously and doesn't need any process with a history behind it; that is T ~ 0.  But of course, that's not true of human designers for which the cognitive process of design and creation entails thought, sequence, experiment, and the trial-and-error search for good information all of which is, above all, a process with a history. In that sense both Richard and our literalist fundie have got it so wrong about designers; designers search. test, reject & select, backtrack, correct, and develop; they don't just do stuff instantaneously but rather leave behind a history of research & development; history, and plenty of it, is implicit in all human artifacts. 

***

As we know our own universe displays a history; it is an object which has developed and didn't spring into existence "just like that". It is this history which biblical literalists are committed to denying with great scientific difficulty. Of course, Richard, like myself, believes in cosmic history, but he's trying to push past us the theological notion that theists should all be like Biblical literalists and postulate T ~ 0 where God stuff just falls into place at command; he is asking me to accept that creation should have little or no algorithmic logic and history behind it and he is also asking me to accept that a cosmos with logic and a long history is evidence that God doesn't exist. Moreover, as we've seen he gives the impression that he's positing a "Big R" superverse. But that, as we've also seen, has little or no evidence going for it and can be justifiably called a bizarro universe as it can be used to explain anything. And while on the subject of bizarro explanations: To me, the concept of the abracadabra God, a concept shared by Biblical literalists, also qualifies as a bizarro God because just about anything goes; see for example my "Beyond Our Ken" series. In fact, it may be that much of Richard's theological concepts stem from his experience with the North American Intelligent Design community and fundamentalist organisations like Answers in Genesis.

For myself the Big R supervesre is as unlikely as the abracadabra God. Neither notions have evidence in their favour; Big-R predicts instabilities in the organisation of the cosmos, instabilities we don't observe, and abracadabra predicts a universe without a logical history, a universe Beyond our Ken.

It is clear our universe has a history of development and this is particularly evident with life and geology, although may I say that I'm not committed to any particular engine/mechanism of evolution. However, I would tentatively submit the idea that the size of the creation is a divine revelation to humankind of the computational costs of a universe such as ours, a universe which is so obviously specialized for developing and supporting life. Another speculative notion which I would like to submit is that our universe may well use expanding parallelism and teleological constraints in order to generate life; this would get rid of the "slow" Log T term in equation 1 above, an equation which pertains to vanilla parallel processing. However, all that is very speculative, and the last thing I want to do is to be like Richard and our foolish literalist fundie who have made their minds up and think everyone else should follow suite, or else be called nasty names by them and their followers. 

Lastly let me comment on this quote from Richard: 

Intelligent engineers aiming to create life don’t make the laboratory for it vastly larger and older and more deadly than is required for the project...etc etc,

That may well be true. But the minimum space-time dimensions of a cognitive "laboratory" depend entirely on:

a) the initial knowledge of the engineers, that is the value of S, and 

b) the configurational complexity of the task in hand which dictates the minimum value of T given S. 

So, if the level of providence the Good Lord has provisioned our universe with measured in terms of its initial algorithmic complexity (S) and the time and space set aside for cosmic development (T), then the incredible sophistication and complexity of life very likely dictates the large space-time dimensions of our cosmos.  From where I stand the cosmos looks very much like an ingenious piece of computational engineering built around equation 1 above. It certainly isn't a tiny piece of an immense Big-R cosmos, or something created last Thursday with a built-in bogus maturity (The omphalos hypothesis).

In part IV I will continue to examine Mr. Richard Carrier's theological assumptions.