Stephen Meyer & God of the Gaps

Stephen Meyer: Haunted by the ghosts of the
enlightenment and mired in a vicious double-bind

In the last part of my critique of North American Intelligent Design (NAID) pundit Granville Sewell I criticized the God-of-the-Gaps theology which subliminally underlies much of the thinking of the NAID community. I also said that they will vehemently deny that theirs is a God-of-the-Gaps stance. Given this denial I thought I would have a look at some of their attempts to refute this accusation starting with NAID pundit Stephen Meyer (pictured above).

Firstly, let me get one thing clear: "Intelligence-of-the-Gaps",  rightly interpreted is a rational scientific position: We use it when we attempt to detect the works of non-transcendent intelligent agents like, humans, hominins, animals and even aliens (*1). The problems arise, however, when God-of-the-gaps tries to masquerade as intelligence of the gaps and therein lies my case against the NAID community. The Christian Omnigod not only transcends creation but His claim to being creator of everything, everywhere & everywhen makes God-of-the-gaps impossible to conceive. 

Anyway let's have a look at what Stephen Meyer has to say about God-of-the-Gaps. The following quote from Meyer was taken from this post on Science & Culture.....

Stephen Meyer Debunks the “God of the Gaps” Objection | Science and Culture Today

....and here's the quote (My emphases): 

STEPHEN MEYER: God-of-the-gaps arguments use gaps in scientific explanation as indicators, or even proof, of God’s action and therefore of God’s existence. Such arguments propose divine acts in place of natural, scientific causes for phenomena that science cannot yet explain. The assumption is that if science cannot explain how something happened, then God must be the explanation. But the danger of using a God-of-the-gaps argument for the action or existence of God is that it lacks the foresight of future scientific discoveries. With the continuing advancement of science, God-of-the-gaps explanations often get replaced by natural mechanisms. Therefore, when such arguments are used as apologetic tools, scientific research can unnecessarily be placed at odds with belief in God.1 The recent Intelligent Design (ID) movement highlights this problem.

MY REMARKS

1. Philosophical background

Well, like Stephen I disagree with God-of-the-gaps thinking but his mode of expression betrays a subliminal philosophy I would take issue with; the problems in the above are with the subtext and the NAID thought forms behind that statement. For a start, look at the way Stephen has casually mentioned "scientific explanation", "natural scientific causes" and "natural mechanisms" as if he and everybody else knows what he means by these terms. But these terms may hide a multitude of conceptual sins. 

Scientific "explanation", so called is, all said and done, about successful description. This descriptive role really takes off when the providential organization of our experiences and observations is such that they become the data dots that can be joined together using succinct mathematical algorithms. The rational repleteness of this highly logical world of experience and observation is so consistently ordered that it allows us to not only define the gritty world of so-called matter but also of cause & effect; it's the kind of world for which the connotations of the term "mechanism" is so apposite. In this connection we note that above Stephen has used the term "natural mechanisms".

But it is clear that cause & effect and the notion of matter are derivative concepts that can only be conceptually synthesized as a result of the particular structure of the mathematical algorithms which control the organization of our experiences and observations. Matter and cause & effect are contingent upon the particular form of mathematical relations which as far as we know could be otherwise; they are not, apparently, logical truisms. The synthetic nature of cause & effect becomes clearer when we encounter the apparent randomness we find in quantum mechanics (QM): In order to come to terms with QM and restore old fashioned cause & effect determinism hidden variable and decoherence theories have been developed. The desperation in the quest to bring back a thoroughgoing cause & effect determinism is evidenced in those multiverse theories; the last resort of the mechanical paradigm. Notions of cause & effect are so entrenched in our thinking that when we encounter randomness such as we find in QM we still believe there to be underlying deterministic cause & effect patterns and that the cosmos is after all an autonomous enlightenment automata; this is an a priori philosophical commitment to the algorithmic simplicities of high order, but because this is apparently a synthetic position we can at least imagine cases where it fails to work (*2).  

Scientific description then is a method of mathematical encapsulation facilitated by cosmic order. The bad news for a thoroughgoing scientism is that this description has a mathematical limit and ultimately leaves us with a kernel of irreducible mathematical brute fact. One response to this situation is, I suppose, that of atheists Bertrand Russell and Galen Strawson who have told us that the universe "just is". In this atheistic context the cosmos itself has nudged out the notion of divine eternity to be replaced by an eternal insentient machine (*4).

There is, however, an instinct in us which rebels against the idea that scientific "explanation" only amounts to contingent but succinct mathematical descriptions. Metaphysical instincts whisper to us that this observable cosmic order merely runs on top of a deeper (logically true?) ontology and that science actually points to something real about the ontology of the "thing-in-itself". In this connection, let's look at how Google AI responds to the prompt "Principle of Sufficient Reason".

The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) states that everything must have a reason, cause, ground, or explanation for why it exists and is the way it is. [1, 2, 3]

Under this view, there are no true "brute facts"—meaning nothing happens or exists completely without an explanation. [1]

Core Concepts

·  No Uncaused Events: Every contingent fact (something that could have been otherwise) requires a sufficient explanation for why it is true. [1, 2, 3]

·   Intelligibility: The universe is assumed to be fully understandable in principle; if we lack an answer, it is a limitation of our knowledge, not a lack of a reason in reality. [1]

Key Figures: The concept dates back to early thinkers like Anaximander, but German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz gave the principle its classic general formulation. Later, Arthur Schopenhauer expanded it into four distinct roots in his work On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5

This response, as far as it goes, does not make it clear that the universe may be fully understandable in terms of mathematical description but in spite of that completely allude us when it comes to the question of that mysterious sufficient reason. Perhaps the universe does have an underlying causative ontology; we have strong instincts that it does(*6). But we can't be dogmatic about that as we don't have access to the thing-in-itself - our only access is to our experiences and observations and at best science is a descriptive method which exploits cosmic organization but which struggles to arrive at a logical truism(s) explaining the whole caboodle. For a Christian such as myself this is where God's self-revelation is needed. But I suspect that the enlightenment idea of a machine working relentlessly and independent of any management by sentient intelligence will be held onto dearly and will be difficult to dispel; it starts as deism and then potentially eventually morphs into atheism. 

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2. Stephen Meyer

It is at this point that the response by Stephen Meyer becomes explicable. He uses terms expressing a malaise which has hung around in our culture since the enlightenment and at the same time he's put himself in a double bind as has the whole NAID community.....

The NAID community is repulsed by the deist-atheist axis and they seek its antidote. The best antidote they've come up with is to make a distinction between mindless blind mechanical normalcy (or as Stephen has put it those natural mechanisms) and intelligent agency. But reading between the lines Stephen appears to have in his mind the old deistical enlightenment thought forms; that is, those dreaded natural mechanisms which hint at the possibility of an autonomous automaton of a universe; the very notion he seeks to refute. And yet Stephen knows that God-of-the-Gaps is a blind alley as he makes clear in the quote above. What he doesn't make clear is that successful scientific "explanation" is a form of description which exploits cosmic high order by inventing mathematical models which successfully join the dots of observation.

As I have so often said, at the heart of so-called scientific "explanation" is the mother or all "gaps"; the gob-smacking kernel of contingent information which inevitably science will leave us with, begs the question: From whence comes this seemingly arbitrary cosmic organization which allows science to compress cosmic data into very effective mathematical algorithms and then leave us at a breath-taking logical hiatus? That hiatus leaves us with a meta-design question about the origins of cosmic contingency. But is this question even meaningful? Should we expect a better answer than the best that atheism can do, which as we have seen, simply tells us that the cosmos "just is", and is probably eternal: Their "god", if you can call it that, is the cosmos itself; but it is not a god which addresses our deepest existential aspirations. 

The  super-meta-gap of science is of a different genus to the in-house design questions which arise when we see flint tools, the  monoliths of Gobekli Tepe or monoliths on the moon, apparently material configurations which likely point to non-transcendent intelligence. It is the failure of NAID philosophy to make this distinction between in-house intelligence and transcendent intelligence which has forced the NAID community toward a God-of-the-gaps anti-evolutionary position; for the NAID community evolution smacks of blind natural forces and therefore it must be opposed. Consequently North American ID has become so closely identified with anti-evolutionism that "NAID" has become a metonym for anti-evolutionism.

But if evolution has occurred it is clear that it would require very careful choreography and design, as I've already remarked. Therefore if we believe in an Omnigod the question of whether such an evolutionary system has been designed and contrived is a significant question that forces itself onto the theological agenda. Evolutionism can't be automatically written off on the basis that we  believe in an intelligently designed cosmos; that's the trap NAID has fallen into. 

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The NAID community are in a double-bind: They must reject God-of-the-gaps thinking and yet at the same time they perceive standard evolution to be governed only by "blind natural forces". For NAIDs those blind natural forces demand periodic divine input to drive natural history toward advanced life. They have saddled themselves with a blind natural forces vs. intelligent design dichotomy. But this dichotomy falls over on the theological stage. When we introduce an Omnigod who transcends space and time all logically possible possibilities become possible. As I've tried to make clear evolution (if it has occurred) requires considerable intelligence to implement. If evolution has occurred it cannot be classified as a blind natural force; in fact for the Christian there really is no such thing as natural forces if they have been created by an Omnigod. 

I personally have no big stake in conventional evolution (*3) either way, as I'm not a biologist. In contrast the NAID community are vehemently anti-evolution as they have increasingly backed themselves into a corner whereby they must declare it as an impossible outcome of blind natural forces. This, I submit, is because a background of deistical thought forms have invaded their thinking: For the NAID community the blind natural forces (sic) of natural history are an incompetent creator. This commits them to the view that natural history is full of ID gaps and since I doubt they will put this intelligence-of-the-gaps down to the tinkering of in-house non-transcendent aliens they will be forced to default to God-of-the-gaps. It is ironic that after all that Stephen Meyer has said above it is conceivable that advancing evolutionary science could start filling in those many gaps in the account of natural history. Let me repeat the second half of the quote from Stephen....

But the danger of using a God-of-the-gaps argument for the action or existence of God is that it lacks the foresight of future scientific discoveries. With the continuing advancement of science, God-of-the-gaps explanations often get replaced by natural mechanisms. Therefore, when such arguments are used as apologetic tools, scientific research can unnecessarily be placed at odds with belief in God.1 The recent Intelligent Design (ID) movement highlights this problem.

......Yes, the NAID movement does highlight this problem; who knows whether or not advancing evolutionary science will fill the gaps that ID seeks to fill with God-intelligence-of-the-gaps! They are themselves vulnerable to the very criticism with which they criticize!

I repeat: None of this is to say that standard evolution has actually happened but the NAIDs have painted themselves into an anti-evolutionary corner and cannot get out without loss of face. They are highly impassioned on this subliminal God-of-the-gaps position. The NAID community is self-validating as they engage in mutual back slapping. Further, they have allied themselves with authoritarian right-wing power brokers. Thus, in North America so-called ID now takes us into a culture that is a combination of anti-evolutionism and right-wing politics; the NAID community also champion the right's anti-establishment views on vaccinations, climate change, sexuality/gender, "libertarianism" (sic) and other issues. The strong-arm leadership behind this right-wing politics helps the NAID community get even with those uncompliant bad boys & girls in the liberal academic establishment! (*5)

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One person in the NAID community, however, who has come close to the kinds of ideas I talk about above is William Dembski.... Just have a look at this link:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Dembski: “I’m not denying evolutionary gradualism, challenging common descent or Natural Selection” (!!!!)

How about that! But although he's not necessarily denying evolution he does point out that evolution must start with a burden of information. That is true because this equation...

Created Information <= Starting Information + Log (Time)

...means that unless we are dealing with a universe which uses expanding parallelism in some way, information is only generated very slowly with the logarithm of time. 

Next time I might have a look at the following post on Science & Culture...

Atheist: Why ID Is Not “God of the Gaps” | Science and Culture Today

Footnotes: 

*1 Examples: Crime detection, Archeological artifacts, flint tools, beaver dams, bird's nests, ant's nests, and the lunar monolith in 2001 Space Odyssey. One might also add embryo development, which works because of the intelligence built into the bio-mechanisms. These mechanisms constitute the Starting Information in the equation:

Created Information <= Starting Information + Log (Time)

*2 But the non-locality of QM is a big departure from Newtonian localized mechanical cause & effect.... "Spooky action at a distance!"

*3 But the evidence for Common Descent is strong although the exact mechanism's driving this engine of descent may be more debatable. 

*4 See also this series: 

Quantum Non-Linearity: Creation, Probability and Something for Nothing? Part V

*5 The academic community are far from faultless. Christian academics John Lennox and Amy Ewing-Orr both tell stories of attempts to silence their witness within academia. Dr. Ewing says in a recent article in Premier Christianity magazine: "There was an intentionality about identifying Christians who might have a public voice and taking them out".  But then what do we expect: Academia is as full of epistemically and morally challenged sinners as is the NAID community. However, Christian biologists Dennis Alexander and Simon Conway-Morris suggest different stories can be told. This subject could do with a bit more research.  

*6 I have a hunch that animals are far less curious & more inclined than human beings to accept that the natural status quo "just is" (As atheist Galen Strawson puts it). They therefore have little urge to ask more questions. Perhaps it is this curious questioning instinct which is distinctly human and is responsible for much human striving for the numinous, the ultimate causative.

Yet Again: Intelligence of the Gaps. Part II

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

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

 

(See here for Part I)

I've said the following before, but I'll say it again...... It was quite a big shock to a politically detached person such as myself to discover how politicized the North American Intelligent Design  (NAID) tribe were. I was being naïve no doubt but I've slowly become aware that NAID's "eggs-all-in-one-basket" anti-evolutionism not only stems from an God/intelligence-of-the-gaps model of creation (denied of course) but it is also a shout of protest against the hostility of the academic community who have by and large put all their eggs in the pro-evolution basket. The natural extension of NAID's political affiliations has lead them to also take onboard climate science scepticism and vaccination scepticism. But to their credit I'm very glad to see that they are not part of the fanatical anti-science jamboree of Ken Ham's Young Earthist cult.

Nevertheless for NAIDs the consequences are that they have become politically unwoke, so much so perhaps that even a traditionalist and conservative (small "c") like myself would look "woke". In fact with narcissist Donald Trump at the helm of their loose right-wing coalition I might even look like a "communist". What an unwoke joke!

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NAID Granville Sewell, who is the subject of this series, appears to be typical: For several years he has repeatedly attempted to refute bog-standard evolutionary theory using the second law of thermodynamics as a theoretical way of undermining evolution. This then opens the way to filling the resulting explanatory gaps in natural history with "intelligent agency". NAID personnel will deny that they are using an intelligence-of-the-gaps model but whenever I look at what they are doing it turns out that they are thinking god intelligence-of-the-gaps. It is ironic that the reason for this intelligence-of-the-gaps thinking stems, I believe, from deep intuitions that NAIDs actually share with atheists: Viz: that if it can be shown that the laws of physics are descriptively complete - that is, those laws can successfully describe all that happens in and to space-time - then the intuition is that God's creative role is redundant (*1). The upshot is that atheists are therefore anxious to fill any gaps in the applicability of the physical laws, whereas the NAID community have committed themselves to postulating gaps in natural history that can then be populated with the work of intelligence. This has imposed on the NAID community a blind (sic) natural forces vs intelligent agency dichotomy. 

It is this cultural context which is the cue for Granville Sewell's quest to show that the second law of thermodynamics proves those blind-natural-forces (sic) have no creative efficacy and therefore demands intelligent interventions. But of course as I've so often said this neglects the Christian view that those so-called "natural forces" are created & maintained by the transcend intelligence of an Omnigod; it is then anybody's guess as to just how much this wild-card of a genius has incorporated His thinking into those "blind (sic) natural forces".

Anyway, let me continue critiquing the following post by Granville Sewell.....

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

Note: The emphases in the quotes below are mine. 

GRANVILLE: Extension to Open Systems. So does the origin and evolution of life, and the development of civilization, on a previously barren planet violate the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics? It is hard to imagine anything that more obviously and spectacularly violates the underlying principle behind the second law than the idea that four fundamental, unintelligent, forces of physics alone could rearrange the fundamental particles of physics into computers, science texts, nuclear power plants, and smart phones. 

MY COMMENT: Granville is just repeating here the same old, same old ill-defined stuff I've already criticized him for. This appeal to our gut feelings where we are supposed imagine that nothing  "more obviously and spectacularly violates the underlying principle behind the second law" is another example of Granville's hand waving argumentation.  

The underlying principle of the second law of thermodynamics is the maximization of entropy within physical constraints. Entropy is defined in terms of the statistical weight of a macrostate. As such the second law does not necessarily imply a trend toward absolute randomness in every corner of a system: Rather the trend is toward maximum entropy and that doesn't necessarily imply the absence of high order. For example, when we think, for instance, of the process of crystallization we realise that entropy maximisation does not entail the absence of highly improbable configurations....... OK, that's no proof of evolution, of course, but as we will see the crystallization process shows that Granville's first principles are far too ill-defined.

No one (including Granville) is suggesting that the four fundamental forces of physics directly created computers, science texts, nuclear power plants and smart phones - they were created by those non-transcendent in-house intelligent agents we call human beings. This intellectual sleight of hand by Granville is an attempt at an reductio ad absurdum argument as he tries to stretch evolutionary credulity to breaking point. But rather than manipulating an instinctual incredulousness the question Granville should be asking is this: Could the four Divinely ordained fundamental forces of physics alone rearrange fundamental particles so as to generate carbon based life according to the establishment view of evolutionary mechanisms? Now that is not only the relevant question, but a very interesting one at that.

Notice also that Granville, like a good NAID, has slipped in the word "unintelligent" when he refers to the "natural" (God ordained) forces of physics. But I'm getting weary of telling Granville that according to Christian theology those "natural forces" were created by the genius of an Omnigod and therefore who dare call them unintelligent? Who knows; those laws, which have been contrived by an Omnigod, just might give us an evolutionary account of natural history especially given the magic numbers of the fine tuning constants whose decimal places could go on for a long, long stretch carrying large amounts of information. 

For me personally the upshot of all this is that I needn't at this stage put all my theoretical eggs in one basket, either evolutionary or anti-evolutionary. Trouble is, the instinctual need to identify which side one is on in the right-wing vs. the establishment tribal battles, prevents people from keeping two things in their heads at once. My advice is to stay well clear of the tribal culture war in the US and especially the MAGArite attempt to coopt and corrupt Christianity. In connection with the latter: MAGArism has, unfortunately, had some success in coopting Christianity as has the mafia boss who has dismantled Russian democracy, started a "forever war" (?), has engaged in international assassinations, and yet is admired by some right-wing personalities. 

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GRANVILLE: The most common reply to this observation is that all current statements of the second law apply only to isolated systems, for example, “In an isolated system, the direction of spontaneous change is from an arrangement of lesser probability to an arrangement of greater probability” and “In an isolated system, the direction of spontaneous change is from order to disorder.”

MY COMMENT: Well, Granville old son, you could have stopped right there at isolated systems because we know that even isolated systems can develop at least temporary pockets of high order as we see in crystallization, though entropy as properly defined must increase in an isolated system. And once again, that's no strong evidence of the much more elaborate high order of organisms but it's going to tax Granville's ill defined more general statement of the second law. 

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GRANVILLE: Although the second law is really all about probability, many people try to avoid that issue by saying that evolution does not technically violate the above statements of the second law because the Earth receives energy from the sun, so it is not an isolated system. But in the above-referenced BIO-Complexity article and again in a 2017 Physics Essays article I pointed out that the basic principle underlying the second law does apply to open systems; you just have to take into account what is crossing the boundary of an open system in deciding what is extremely improbable and what is not. In both I generalized the second statement cited above to:

"If an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is isolated, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely improbable."

MY COMMENT: For the umpteenth time the second law is not all about probability; it is also, crucially, about the constraint of physical law which imposes probabilistic envelopes on what can happen; as such the second law is therefore about conditional probabilities: Granville has not made clear the distinction between unconditional and conditional probabilities. Also, entropy, which is defined in terms of the statistical weight of a macrostate, is not identical to randomness. Granville is making none of this clear and this is muddying the waters of his argument. Also for a Christian theist (such as myself) those conditions have been created by an Omnigod of immense intellectual resources; this is not acknowledged by Granville. Granville's argument is based on gut feelings, hand waving and tribal prejudice.

Let's be clear: Under the right temperature and pressure crystals form in an isolated system and this may involve those crystals expelling heat and sometimes absorbing heat: it all depends on which macrostate has the highest entropy, where "entropy" is a monotonically increasing function of the statistical weight of a macrostate. Because of those extraordinary Divinely inspired laws of physics the macrostate with the highest statistical weight could conceivably have large pockets of high order - as we see in the process of crystallisation. Once again to suppress a NAID knee-jerk response here, I do not therefore automatically conclude that evolution must be possible. 

What I'm saying is that Granville's case is far too muddy to prove anything. When Granville tells us that an increase in order is extremely improbable....

1.  He doesn't qualify it by telling us what kind of order, whether simple crystalline order or organic order. 

2.  He is unclear about conditional probabilities.

3.  He does not define entropy.

4. He does not acknowledge the possible implications of the wildcard of an Omnigod creator.

Granville's generalised statement of the second law falls over on the above points. For example, the increase in order entailed by crystallization has an extreme unconditional improbability and yet its appearance as a substantial pocket of high order in an isolated system may have a very high conditional probability. 

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GRANVILLE: Then in Physics Essays I illustrated this tautology by showing that the entropy associated with any diffusing component X (if X is diffusing heat, this is just thermal entropy) can decrease in an open system, but no faster than it is exported through the boundary. Since this “X-entropy” measures disorder in the distribution of X, we can say that the “X-order” (defined as the negative of X-entropy) can increase in an open system, but no faster than X-order is imported through the boundary.

MY COMMENT: No problems with that. Granville then goes on to define X-entropy in terms of any diffusing quantity which could be matter, or heat or anything else that diffuses.......

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GRANVILLE:  In this analysis the rate of change of thermal entropy (S) was defined as usual by:

where Q is heat energy and T is absolute temperature, and the rate of change of X-entropy (S_x) was defined similarly by:

where C is the density (concentration) of X. In these calculations (which, remember, are just illustrating a tautology) I again assumed that nothing was going on but diffusion and heat conduction (diffusion of heat). I had first published this analysis in my reply “Can ANYTHING Happen in an Open System?” to critics of my Mathematical Intelligencer article and again in an appendix of a 2005 John Wiley text, The Numerical Solution of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations⁹and again in Biological Information: New Perspectives.

MY COMMENT: Notice the emphasis on diffusion - I'll be coming back to that in part III 

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GRANVILLE: Everyone agrees that, in an isolated system, natural forces will never reorganize scrap metal into digital computers, because this is extremely improbable. If the system is open, it is still extremely improbable that computers will appear, unless something is entering the system from outside which makes the appearance of computers not extremely improbable. For example, computers.

MY COMMENT: Here we go again with the sleight of hand.... Yes, everyone (I think) does agree with Granville's point about junk yard computers. But the question isn't about the probability of human technology popping up out of the blue in a junk yard; rather it is about the conditional probability of accepted evolutionary mechanisms giving rise to life as we know it; perhaps even just a few self replicating cells. Granville keeps trying stretch our intuitions about the credibility of standard evolutionary theory by making comparison with the spontaneous appearance of junk yard computers. But is bio-evolution comparable to junkyard computers? Bio-evolution has at least a few evidential pointers that hint at common descent which in turn lends a measure of plausibility to evolutionary thought. In contrast junkyard evolution does not have any known evidentially prompting pointers. Granville is clearly hand waving here and is trying to manipulate our gut feelings.

And finally: It is true that something is constantly entering all systems from the outside: namely, the imposed organisation of the transcendent laws of physics.  

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GRANVILLE: Application to Our Open System Now let’s consider just one of many events that have occurred on Earth (and only here, it appears) that seem to be extremely improbable: “From a lifeless planet, there arose spaceships capable of flying to its moon and back safely.” This is certainly macroscopically describable, but is it extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view? You can argue that it only seems extremely improbable, but it really isn’t. 

MY COMMENT: Would you believe it, Granville is at it yet again; that is, distracting us from the real issue in hand by jumping to spaceships and computers. But the question in hand is this: What is the conditional probability of evolution given that an Omnigod has created physical conditions that evolutionists claim have given us an evolutionary natural history. Granville might as well be asking us if it is plausible that there are fairies at the bottom of our gardens; well, no that isn't plausible because fairies at the bottom of the garden has insufficient evidential prompts to get us thinking about fairies. Do complex highly organised machines appear in a junk yard? Once again there are no evidential pointers to merit a hypothesis/test cycle of investigation. What about evolutionary mechanisms as currently postulated? Well, at least we have some evidential prompts here to spur a hypothesis/test cycle. As such evolutionary mechanisms have some plausibility.  But how much?

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In  part III of this series we find Granville at last grappling with the real question in hand. Viz: Are the proposed mechanisms claimed to drive biological evolution evidential and/or credible? In particular can we at least realistically expect biological replicators to arise given the earthly chemistry created by an Omnigod? The question is not whether computers appear spontaneously in junk yards, or bird's-nests appear out of nowhere in a wood or beaver dams are pieced together by a running stream; the unconditional probability of such structures is all but nil, but they have a much higher conditional probability given the existence of humans, birds and beavers. Likewise the unconditional probability of even the simplest biological replicator is all but nil. But given that the laws of physics and their constants have been created by an Omnigod the 64 trillion dollar question is this: What is the conditional likelihood of evolution as it is currently tendered by the academic community?

Before I finish let repeat what I believe to be at the bottom of the polarisation between the evolutionary academic status quo and those of a NAID persuasion: I submit that there is a feeling abroad, (whether instinctual or cultural, it's not a feeling I share) that should the completeness of physics and chemistry be adequately abducted this would obviate the need for a creator (*1). Consequently atheists are anxious to fill any gaps in the descriptive account of physics whereas the NAID community are anxious that the gaps remain, which for them is the pretext to invoke an intelligence-of-the-gaps paradigm. 

Such thoughts have their roots in deism and such thoughts lead to the "blind natural forces vs intelligent agency" dichotomy of the NAID community. At the risk of being labelled "Woke" or "Leftist" I whole heartedly reject the NAID's God-of-the-gaps philosophy. But the battle lines are now entrenched and the stream of much Western thought has found its course and has incised & fixed its meandering flow into the hard rocks of tribal prejudice. 

                                                        To be continued......

 FOOTNOTES

*1 Something that I need to make clear is this: There are two types of completeness that the laws of physics may possess. Firstly, there is descriptive completeness; this means that the physical laws are sufficient to describe all that happens in space-time, although those laws may be contingent and have no logical completeness. Descriptive completeness alone leaves us with what I call Physic's Irreducible Logical Barrier. In contrast, if the Laws of Physics have logical completeness it means that not only do these laws have descriptive completeness but also that they emerge from deeper principles which are logically true and therefore the laws of physics can't be anything other than what they are without entailing a logical contradiction.  Given the current state of our knowledge it is not clear whether the laws of physics are descriptively complete or have the much stronger logical completeness.

The existence of some kind of logical truism underlying the cosmos came up in my Carry on Carriering series, but there was no commitment in that series as to whether the deeper logical truism was the aseity of a sentient God or logically obliged insentient principles; on that subject personal intuitions rule. I know what my intuitions tell me on that score. 

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.

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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!

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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!

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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. 

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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)

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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.

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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.