The Discovery Institute and God-of-the-gaps. Part II

 

Picture from: True and False Cases Of The God Of The Gaps Fallacy - Cerebral Faith

In this series I'm looking at a post by North American Intelligent Design (NAID) pundit Jonathan MacLatchie: Here's the post and his mugshot:

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

It is my contention that in spite of denials NAID has it's roots in a subliminal god-of-the-gaps theophilosophy. However, as it turns out NAID's stance isn't just about logic, philosophy and theology: There is also a strong cultural and political vein running through the NAID tribe which makes the whole thing very messy and unpleasant to deal with. In fact my thesis is that NAID's anti-evolutionism is driven by the popularist notion (possibly related to enlightenment deism) of a "god-did-it vs evolution-did-it" dichotomy.  The NAID golden boys have picked up this dichotomy and run with its popular appeal and this has help them promote their ministries. In a confusing and apparently anchorless, meaningless world, the popular mind is fertile ground for those who promote simple certainties and dichotomies which help sort out the sheep from the goats: For example, as I myself would be critical of NAID tribal culture and especially any links it has with Trumpery, this would likely classify me as "woke" or even a "radical leftist"; rubrics which are wholly inappropriate. Human tribal life is, in fact, a lot more complicated than a simple division between the woke and the unwoke; this much is clear when we consider the Tucker Carlson case; see here:

Views, News and Pews: The Super Unwoke vs the Unwoke: A right wing split.

Division, it seems, is the natural state of human affairs. (See 1 Cor 11:18)

I'm not the least bit surprised that the followers of the likes of an authoritarian fundamentalist such as Ken Ham would be Trumpites. But neither are the NAID community above some rather dodgy political maneuvering.  A post on atheist PZ Myer's blog is a sign of just how dodgy NAID's political connections can get: It tells us that NAID Bill Dembski has been hob-knobbing with the far right hardline fascist "Vox Day" thereby lending him the credibility and prestige of NAID culture. See these links: 

Vox Day’s amazing ego, and Bill Dembski don’t care

Vox Day Interview on Evolutionary Theory - by Bill Dembski

This was really disappointing! I once thought better of NAID and especially Bill Dembski. But there's no persuading those who are culturally and politically primed: The issue becomes impenetrably sociological, political and polarised. Polarisation passion feeds. Passion polarisation breeds. Polarisation is passion's cause, for crusade and holy wars.  However, let me continue with Jonathan's theophilosophy and see where it leads.

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JONATHAN: Lowder concludes that “Whatever problems may exist within that argument, being a God-of-the-gaps argument clearly isn’t one of them.” I completely agree with Lowder’s assessment. Intelligent design makes the argument that various specific features of life and the universe — in particular, the informational properties of DNA, and the irreducibly complex nature of molecular systems — are rendered vastly more probable than they would otherwise be by the supposition that a conscious mind was involved in their origins. Thus, they are positively confirmatory of design. Since confirmations of design in the universe are significantly less surprising (or, more probable) given the hypothesis of theism than on its falsehood, the evidence of design also translates into positive evidence of the existence of God. Perhaps there are vulnerabilities in this argument structure — but, whatever may be wrong with it, it is certainly not wrong by virtue of being a god-of-the-gaps argument. I would like to commend Lowder for his intellectual integrity in pointing this out, despite our disagreements on the larger question of whether intelligent design is in fact true.

MY COMMENT:  As we've seen in Part I Lowder's approach is too vague and in fact too close to god-of-the gaps to bail out NAID.  Nevertheless, I do agree with Jonathan that the remarkable organizational features of the universe, especially in its propensity to support life, are intuitively compelling evidence for a cosmically transcendent designer, although it's true to say that for some people this intuition looks to be absent (?). For me personally however, this intuition exists whether or not the currently conceived mechanisms of evolution is the actual engine behind natural history. The popularist theophilosophy which cannot help but perceive a god-did-it vs evolution-did-it dichotomy runs counter to an understanding that accepted evolutionary mechanisms also intuitively point to a transcendent sentient cause. As for the certainty that Jonathan displays about irreducible complexity: I have to confess that I don't share that certainty: For given our physical regime it is not clear that configuration space doesn't have a spongeam, which is a necessary condition of gradualist concepts of evolution. Garnering certainty about the question of the spongeam one way or the other is not easy. But why get uptight about this question when it is clear that evolutionary mechanisms as currently conceived are as remarkable if not more remarkable than life itself. So when Jonathan says above that: 

Intelligent design makes the argument that various specific features of life and the universe — in particular, the informational properties of DNA....are rendered vastly more probable than they would otherwise be by the supposition that a conscious mind was involved in their origins.

... I'm very sympathetic to the intuitions expressed here, but these intuitions are compelling whether or not the engine driving natural history is standard evolution.  But of course we know that Jonathan is part of a community who are vociferously anti-evolution. And as I keep saying the philosophical reason for this, I submit, is that NAID hasn't taken cognizance of the big difference between inhouse non-transcendent intelligent agents and a transcendent and yet immanent Omnigod. With the Omnigod it's not a case of an explanatory gap here and there (as it is with the work of cosmically inhouse intelligence) but a gap everywhere and everywhen: As yet we have no logical proof for the spatial and temporal persistence of the organization imposed by physical laws; this remains a logical hiatus as far as we are concerned. Moreover, the NAID community appear not to have made anything of the realization of just how remarkable evolution is (But see Dembski here who seems to have an inkling).  None of this is to say that I'm committed to the standard evolutionary picture; I'm free to keep my options open until I feel that the evidence is starting to personally bite. After all I'm not a paleontologist or biologist. 

But dodgy NAID philosophy apart I suggest that the real backbone behind this community is sociopolitical: They are riding on the back of a popularist dualism that conceives an evolution-did-it vs God-did-it dichotomy.  But not only that; this popularism has resulted in them falling into the embrace of Trumpite Christianity. NAID is riding on a sociologically motivated god-of-the gaps theophilosophy whether they like it or not, whether they admit it or not. 

.....to be continued. 

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. 

An Eternal Universe or an Eternal God?

Both the affirmation AND THE DENIAL
of a creation point originate from
 deep theological instincts

I was very interested in the following post by Bruce Gordon on the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) web site Science & Culture ...

 On the BGV Theorem and Eternal Cyclic Cosmology | Science and Culture Today

It's not another of those plastic NAID articles which sets so-called "natural forces" over and against "intelligent intervention design", but instead probes the deep question of an initial creation point. It's particular concern is the defense of the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem. This theorem tells us that the geodesics of any universe subject to an on going average expansion, when traced back in time, will converge onto a singularity - that is, an infinitesimal point where it is likely that 0/0 divisions lead to indefinite results which our current physics cannot handle; in short a place where known physics breaks down. When this happens all information is lost and it is impossible to reverse the clock any further back. Therefore the singularity effectively becomes a creation point; a point where the universe starts.  

The BGV "creation point theorem" has been a God-send to those theists who support the Kalam arguments for a creator God such as William Lane-Craig. Contra-wise, it has also been a target for atheists who feel uncomfortable about a creation point and who have therefore tendered physical models which attempt get round this theorem. Bruce Gordon is doing a series of articles that critiques such attempts to overthrow the BGV theorem (*1)

Although Gordon looks as though he is doing a thorough & worthy job I'm not sure that I would want to be too strongly committed to BGV myself. For example, some of the critics of the theorem point out that space-time may not be a continuum (*2) and this puts a question mark over the assumption of geodesic continuity which BGV uses. However, a mere question mark over BGV would not necessarily invalidate BGV; rather it would just have the effect of telling us that BGV cannot be regarded as settled theoretical science which in turn would unsettle attempts to use it in Kalam style arguments. 

But even from a Biblical point of view it is not immediately clear to someone like myself that the Genesis 1 account, where we read about a sequence of separations which impose organization on an existing ontology, teaches a definite creation point; in this connection the semantic intent behind Gen 1:1 is important  - but I'll leave that question to the theologians. 

Whether or not BGV is valid or whether or not Genesis 1 teaches an absolute beginning is not something I'm going to discuss here. What I would like to point out in this post is that for both atheists and theists so much hangs on the question of whether or not the cosmos had an absolute beginning. Why do theists put so much investment in absolute beginnings and why do atheist seek to theoretically overthrow absolute origins in favor of an eternal universe? 

I've already criticized Kalam-like arguments for putting too much stress on the contingent boundary conditions needed at a creation point when in fact it is clear that the cosmic organization mathematically implicit in the "algorithms" of physics entails a highly contingent logical boundary everywhere and everywhen (*3). The question then is this; what motivates both theist's and atheist's deep interest in potential creation-points where indefinite 0/0 divisions entail a breakdown of known physics? The likely (subliminal?) mindsets which drive this interest on both sides of the debate is something I've only recently become cognizance of: My strong suspicion is that the underlying obsession with arguments which  tender either creation-points or anti-creation-point models is a theological mindset common to both theists and atheists. With atheists that mindset may well be subliminal.

If atheists can find alternatives to BGV and convince themselves that the cosmos might just possibly be eternal, where does that put the concept of an eternal God? Is there room for two eternal entities? i.e both God & the cosmos? In attempting to give the cosmos an eternal existence atheists are giving it a quality once thought to only pertain to God. Although to be sure atheists haven't proved it, an eternal cosmos would suggest that like theism's God, the ontology of the eternal cosmos must therefore have an underlying logical necessity which was once thought to only be inherent to the ontology of the Divine (*5). In short for anti-creation-point atheism the cosmos has become a kind of eternal "god", in so far as it has created the Stars, the Earth and its living hosts. But this atheist "god" is an impersonal soulless "god" of utter dispassionate indifference; it has absolutely no sentient awareness, let alone any interest, in our continued existence. According to atheist physicist Brian Cox the huge cosmic machine will, without a scintilla of regret one-day extinguish us. As Brian says.....

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.

That sums up the "hope" and outlook of many an atheist; this is where their logic takes them. What atheists believe to be an insentient cosmic machine (*4) has of course no interest in calling us to account for our failure to live up to the demands of the superego. No surprise then that some theists are brazen enough to suggest that a cosmos with a complete indifference to our morality explains what is behind motivated atheism's enthusiasm for eternal universes.

Footnotes

*1 See the following link for another of Gordon's articles:

Past-Eternal Loop Quantum Cosmology Gets the Bounce | Science and Culture Today

*2 My own (highly speculative) notions around Quantum Non-linearity which derive quantum gravity from the approximations of the diffusion equation are of this ilk: Gravity and Quantum Non-Linearity - Timothy Reeves - Google Books

*3 See this post Quantum Non-Linearity: The Kalam Argument Sucks.

*4 See: TheRiddleOfTheSphinx.pdf - Google Drive.

See also: cosmicPerspective3.pdf - Google Drive

*5  I am unaware of any really convincing ontological arguments for God any more than I'm aware of ontological arguments demonstrating the logical necessity of the observed cosmos. See Carrier, R for a failed attempt to generate an organized cosmos from probability theory.