Does Intelligent Design Make Testable Predictions? Part 2

Could ID predict this scenario? If it happened would the explanatory filter fail to detect ID?

In the first part of this series I expressed doubt about Intelligent Design’s ability to make hard predictions; after all, ID covers a large range of opinions from Sir John Polkinghorne’s fruitful evolutionism to Beyond our Ken Ham’s mature creation, a creation created “just like that” 6000 years ago. It seems that ID can be used to underwrite so many creation scenarios that its predictive content is seriously compromised. I say this as an ID creationist myself, so I am not saying it from an anti-ID stance. In fact I say it because I am anxious to make all due allowance for the problems of prediction that arise naturally from an ontology that starts with the assumption of some complex presumably self-explaining entity whose nature is very alien to human kind; hardly a sound basis for successful prediction - and we thought predicting human behaviour was difficult enough. So perhaps the lack of predictability in ID is less a bug than it is an expected feature of the ontology it posits. Let’s face it, ID is going to struggle to be hard science.

So where does this leave the predictions in Uncommon Descent’s post here? Well, ID does become a harder science if, as seems to be the case in the community UD represents, ID is de-facto anti-evolutionism. A de-facto anti-evolutionism is liable to contradict certain evolutionary scenarios and will presumably impact expected biological and paleontological observations. But even if we assume an anti-evolutionary position that still leaves us with an open ended range of ID candidates running from Old Earth Creationism to fundamentalist views like that of Beyond our Ken Ham. Anti-evolutionists, then, will claim that they know what hasn’t happened, but they have no consensus on what has happened and consequently they are going to be vague about just what they expect the fossil record to reveal; all they know is that it’s not going to reveal evolution, at least as currently understood. Nevertheless, when ID slips over into anti-evolutionism it at least appears to be saying something with a little more content than “God did it – somehow”.

Anyway, without further ado here are the first four predictions in UD’s list, each followed by my own comment. I was hoping to get through all predictions in one post, but as there are a total of 14 predictions it looks as though it’s going to be a long hot summer.

ID Prediction 01: ID predicts that the Universe had a beginning.

My Comment: I can’t see why this follows. In his book “The Intelligent Universe” Sir Fred Hoyle moots the idea that life is intelligently designed and yet as a lifelong supporter of Steady State Theory he obviously didn’t think his version of ID implied a universe with a beginning. Neither do I see this as a prediction of ID in its most abstracted form. However, I agree that it is a prediction of mainstream Christian Theism; but Christian theism isn’t ID in its most abstracted form.

ID Prediction 02: ID predicts an increase (and not a decrease), as science progresses, in the number of finely-tuned parameters pertinent to the laws and constants of physics.

My Comment: I have a feeling that this prediction arises out of a misconception I have occasionally seen on UD that physical laws can’t carry information: The naive argument runs as follows: Laws equate to “necessity” and therefore the patterns they generate have a probability of 1. A probability of 1 entails zero information. The upshot is that many anti-evolutionists cannot see how the patterns implied by physical laws can be a receptacle of information. The only kind of information they recognize, then, are configurations that appear to have been patched in “by hand” rather than generated by physical laws. Moreover, Dembski’s explanatory filter, although valid in circumstances within the cosmic context, has the unfortunate side effect of making it look as though Law and Disorder causes obviate the need for Intelligent Design; the filter doesn’t readily raise the question of the Intelligent origin of Law and Disorder but instead invokes a regress whereby Law and Disorder generates Law and Disorder.

All in all this amounts to a double whammy against the efficacy of physical laws, for not only do they appear to be information-less, but the all important explanatory filter fails to explicitly acknowledge that laws themselves may be intelligently contrived. Thus, on UD there is tendency for only “hand patched” information to register on their radar as having ID origins. Hence in UD’s view the greater the level of overt hand patching the firmer the case for ID. Anti-evolutionists, then, expect more hand patched configuring rather than less. In my view high levels of “hand patching” does not necessarily follow from ID. If it really is possible to generate life using law and disorder, then given the level of Intelligence envisaged by ID creationists it follows that that intelligence is well able choose an elegant set of laws with a minimum of adjustable variables. Whether elegant laws can actually generate information I have considered on the following web pages:

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2010/11/self-organisation.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2009/12/darwin-bicentenary-part-29-dembski-and.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2009/03/darwin-bicentenary-15-critique-of.html

However, I must add a disclaimer: None of this necessarily means that Physical Law is the means by which  a creative intelligence has introduced information into our world. The UDers may be right and life isn’t a product of law and disorder, but has, in fact, been directly patched in by Divine Intelligence in the form of a second creative dispensation – this is why I like to keep tabs on UD in case they come up with something; they just might. Unlike some people who call them “IDiots” I do have respect for their abilities.

ID prediction 03: ID predicts the presence of specified complexity in living systems.

My Comment: For something to have “specified complexity” two conditions must be met. Firstly, the object must be complex in configuration – this rules out highly ordered configurations like crystalline periodicities. Secondly, the object must be highly improbable - this rules out highly disordered configurations because high disorder, by virtue of its overwhelming representation in the space of possibilities, is, assuming equal a-priori probabilities, very probable. Hence objects with specified complexity are objects that are both complex and at the same time members of a very improbable class. In absolute terms it is clear that organic structures fulfill both these conditions – they are complex and yet ordered enough to be very far removed from absolute disorder. So in one sense the above “prediction” is less a prediction than it is a manifestly obvious feature of life. I must emphasise, however, that I have just said “in absolute terms” – that is, a la Fred Hoyle’s Junkyard Jumbo “explosion” where it is assumed that each and every possible configuration of elements is equally possible thus entailing an absolutely minute probability of a Jumbo Jet forming during an explosion.

But if as evolutionists are implying life is a product of the “self organization” implicit in the laws of physics, then in terms of conditional probabilities the probability of life is much greater than it would be in absolute terms. The probability of life conditioned on the Laws of Physics can be represented as Prob(Life|Laws of Physics). Evolutionists are effectively telling us that the value of Prob(Life|Laws of Physics) is great enough for there to be a realistic chance of the formation of life in the history of the universe. Thus, the “specified complexity” of life, given the Laws of Physics, is correspondingly reduced. Now, as far as the UD community is concerned, specified complexity is used to detect Intelligent Design; it is used in the explanatory filter to decide whether a configuration is a product of intelligence or law and disorder. The trouble is, as I have pointed out above, the explanatory filter does not explicitly acknowledge the present of intelligence if a configuration can be explained, with a reasonable probability, as the outcome of law and disorder. Hence, if Prob(Life|Laws of Physics) is sufficiently high UDers are liable to lose sight of a cosmic intelligence behind the universe. Consequently, they favour the view that Prob(Life|Laws of Physics) is extremely low, which is the mathematical way of expressing their strong anti-evolutionist line; that is, they maintain that the laws of physics are not a sufficient condition for life thus entailing the high specified complexity of organic structures even given the laws of physics.

In order to convert the conditional probability Prob(Life|Laws of Physics) into the absolute probability Prob(Life), we need to know Prob(Laws of Physics). Trouble is, we haven’t got a clue what this value is and in fact we have little idea how to calculate it, if indeed it is an intelligible concept. In spite of some speculations about how physical laws might change across a multiverse no quantification is currently possible because there is no known Law and Disorder regime that generates law and disorder regimes. However, we can perhaps get an inkling of an answer to this question if we remind ourselves of an important mathematical abstraction: Namely, of all possible platonic patterns of behavior the ordered behavior described by the laws of physics is clearly an extreme rarity. Hence on this basis, and assuming equal a-priori probabilities, Prob(Laws of Physics) looks to be very low. This implies that even if Prob(Life|Laws of Physics) is relatively high, then the absolute probability of life, Prob(Life), is very low. So as far as specified complexity is concerned life has a very low absolute probability whether or not it is implicit in the laws of physics. That means that the above UD “prediction” has more the character of a logical truism in as much as it is true whether we are evolutionists or not. Therefore this “prediction” does not necessarily express an anti-evolutionist view.

ID prediction 04: ID predicts that, as scientific research progresses, biological complexity will be seen to increase over time, and information will have a more and more central role in the governing of life’s operations.

My comment: By “increase over time” I think the author actually means human research time. If so then this seems a rather trivial prediction given that as far the extent of our knowledge about organisms is concerned the only way is up!

But I’m going to use this opportunity as an excuse to talk about an increase in organic complexity over paleontological time; a prediction that is not peculiar to anti-evolutionist ID but also follows if Prob(Life|Laws of Physics) has realistic values - that is, evolution itself predicts an increase in biological complexity over time. Let me explain.

It is clear that not all biological organisms are of equal complexity. Here I am not so much talking about configurational complexity but the more abstract computational complexity measured by computation time. For example, it is fairly self evident that metazoans must be preceded by precursor structures; very likely single cell organisms. Single cell organisms in turn will be preceded by basic chemical constituents. In short any organic structure is preceded by a minimum number of precursor conditions that follow in a strict stratified sequence. This stratified sequence forms a kind “critical path” in the manufacture of the structure. The longer this path, the more computationally complex the structure is because the minimum time needed to arrive at the structure  is an increasing function of this sequence length.

If evolution is a kind of diffusion motion through configuration space then the precursor structures will necessarily be reached first. This diffusion motion causes a slow population growth in organic configuration space where the stratification sequence ensures that the “lower levels” will be populated before the “higher levels”. Thus it follows that biological complexity will be seen to increase over time. One way to think about this result is thermodynamically: The Earth is in a kind of morphological disequilibrium; as time increases the shuffling of happenstance entail a kind of diffusion motion which ensures the progressive population of morphological slots over time. Those morphological slots that require a sequence of morphological stages to be followed before they are arrived at will be populated later rather than sooner. The result is that biological complexity, computationally speaking, increases over time.

Religious Control Freaks

Inquisitors Attempt to Gag Freedom of Speech at NN&N

Who is Trying to Censor My Post on NN&N? "Answers in Genesis" or The Mysterious XXX Brotherhood? It's looking like the latter at the moment.

A rabidly fundamentalist article has appeared on the Christian Web site Network Norwich and Norfolk (NN&N) . The article is by an Answers in Genesis rep and consists of  the usual off the peg quip theology, backed up with spiritual threats implying Divine disleasure if the YEC view isn't believed. I posted a rebuttle, but unfortunately my main comment kept getting deleted by an anonymous "gremlin" user of the site who is presumbly  not at all pleased with my contribution. I in turn keep reposting it. To help things a long a little I'm posting my NN&N comments here so that I can use them as reference material if needs be: The gremlin will attempt to influence the site wallahs at NN&N in order to get my stuff deleted permanently. It is a classic fundamentalist ploy to attempt to gag the opposition rather than engage it in reason.

My apologies but the following won't be very meaningful unless you have followed NN&N; I'm just using my blog to as web space.

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The “hermeneutic” that this YEC author refers to does not lead to easy or infallible interpretations as he should himself be well aware of. Moreover meta-statements made by an author clarifying meaning must themselves be interpreted by the interpreter. Thus we ourselves are always, repeat always, the weak link that stops us short of claiming to have an infallible grasp of God’s Word. This then ought to prevent us making audacious claims about a particular interpretation of scripture. 

Re: The Historical Hermeneutic: This is particularly difficult to apply given that the contemporary mindset is certainly not identical to that of the Biblical writers. For example, it is unlikely that the early Biblical writers had any concept of the Earth as a globe and certainly not a spinning globe; their world view would be very geocentric. It is no surprise then that Answers in Genesis have clashed with Christian Geocentrists over the meaning of scripture. A sharp clash between AiG’s Danny Falkner and the Geocentrist scientist Gerardus Bouw can be seen here:

http://www.geocentricity.com/ba1/fresp/index.html

It is quite likely that the Greek concept of a spherical Earth didn’t figure much in the consciousness or interests of the Biblical writers and so perhaps it is not surprising that the Flat Earth society has, in times past, claimed their views to be based on “God’s Word”. See here:

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm

Let us also recall in this connection the Witness Lee Brotherhood, who have made frequent recent visits to NN&N’s web pages. They follow the teaching of G.H. Pember’s Gap theory interpretation of Genesis 1 – an idea which I think you will find is strongly opposed by AiG. The Witness Lee Brotherhood believe that a Gap interpretation is all part of God’s “recovery” modus operandi. For them the concept of recovery is very much bound up with the end time restoration of the church as a brotherhood that blends into a spiritual elite. The Witness Lee brotherhood isn’t some uber-unorthodox cult: Their scriptural interpretations are largely mainstream evangelical although some idiosyncrasies such as the “recovery” doctrine do set them apart and guess what, they would likely view AiG as part of the unblended Christian “Babylon”.

One thing is clear; whether we are talking about AiG, Christian Geocentrists, Christian Flat-Earthers, the Recovery Brotherhood, or numerous other exclusive and devout religious sects, all are very pious, very vehement and utterly convinced that they are “taking God at his Word”. In fact I have even heard of some fundamentalist ultras who are dissatisfied with AiG’s compromise of mixing scripture with science. For them Sola Scriptura really means Sola Scriptura and they would rather drop all scientific dabblings (Something which is actually impossible to do) and they regard scientific creationists like AiG to “have fallen into the trap of being Greeks looking for Wisdom. and trying to compete wisdom v wisdom.”  The overall effect of this plethora of conflicting claims by those who “take God at his Word” is to evacuate its apparent meaningfulness.

When I was first converted to Christianity I was given the YEC hard sell, a hard sell that carefully juxtaposed YEC philosophy with the phrases we can see in the above article such as: “Putting words into Gods mouth”, “Applying your opinion to scripture”, “Compromising God’s word”, “God means what he says”, “ignoring God’s word”, “believing atheistic systems” and threats of what might happen on Judgment day if you don’t take God at his word etc etc. All this was scary and intimidating and naturally enough focused the mind of the religious novice on his judgment before God if he didn’t consent to YEC. The truism that the reader inevitably supplies a fallible interpretation is paid lip service to; in practice man’s interpretations become identified to God’s truth; in practice man’s interpretations sneak past critical analysis and somehow appear to directly emerge from scripture without an act of interpretation; they thereby attempt to place themselves beyond critical scrutiny by claiming to have God’s direct authority.

To cut a long story short: As my faith, confidence and knowledge grew not only did I find YEC science wanting and their use of scripture suspect, I also became very disturbed by their implicitly threatening language which looked like an attempt to apply spiritual duress. Around the same time I had started researching the cults and the similarities were alarming. On a sectarian/cult scale of 1 to 10 I would put AiG at around 6+.

I see that same strident and intimidating tones from the author of the above article that I saw many years ago; the same threatening spiritual pretensions that implicitly masquerade as “God’s Word”. It’s sectarian and it’s cult like. Above all it’s all too conceitedly human; even fanatical. To think I was nearly rushed into speaking like that myself. Frankly I find the whole thing revolting. 

NOTE: We must also be very mindful of RichardL’s excellent point about the genus of Biblical literature.

…...following on from these comments I would like to add that the "historical hermeneutic" has several related problematical issues/questions: 

a) Historical context may be humanly unrecoverable. “Plain readings” are not necessarily the rule.

b) Translation/copying issues raise questions over the whereabouts of the “original word”.

c) Given that we are dealing with a Divine Omni-Agency, there is a measure of inscrutability as to how God might use his word: Conceivably he is well able to use the resources of a contemporary context (rather than the original context) to invest his word with new meanings in order to achieve his purposes.

d) Does the historical hermeneutic have the relevant Biblical meta-statements justifying its usage?

e) It is very likely that the general reader looks at the Bible unaware of the gulf in meanings that could exist by virtue of the separation of his context from the context of the writer. It is quite likely that general reader uses an informal “on the hoof” hermeneutic that often leads to meanings very differently from the original writer: Can such informal interpretations be detected and should they be rejected or accepted? 

f) Use of the Holy Spirit’s name to underwrite a proprietary interpretation of the text begs the question.

There are other issues, but that will do for now.

The Choice is Yours

Now here''s a guy who believes in freedom of choice: "My way or the damned way" 

13/05/2011: After posting the above cartoon I was reminded of this post by Arni Zachariassen; the quote below taken from the post shows why. Caution! You're about to enter  "Beyond our Ken Ham's"  false dichotomy zone.

But if you repeatedly tell people that there’s only one way of doing Christianity and any deviation from that norm is compromise and a start down the slippery slope to abortion-loving, homosexual-marrying monkey atheism – well, you’re setting people up for the fall. Because any responsible higher education will relativise any theological position (that’s what higher education does), especially one the is founded upon science-denial, philosophical naivety and theological exclusivism. And if someone’s been told enough times that they have to choose between either that or the complete renunciation of the Christian faith? Let’s just say that the likelihood for apostasy is a lot higher.

Middlebrow Atheism. Part 5 (Final Part)

If you don't seek you may not find

This is the final part of my “Middlebrow Atheism” series. The other parts can be found as follows:

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2011/04/middlebrow-atheism-part-4.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2011/03/middlebrow-atheism-part-3.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2011/03/middlebrow-atheism-part-2.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2011/03/middlebrow-atheism-part-1.html

Video Item 08: That some theists require an extra miracle for the creation of life is an admission that the cosmos isn’t fine tuned enough.

My Comments: This criticism really applies to anti-evolutionists who believe that a second “creative dispensation” is required on top of physics. Although I have reservations about conventional evolutionary theory I personally prefer the “one creative dispensation” view. One issue I have with the two dispensations view is that it is liable to disconnect living things from their cosmic stage: The dimensions and parameters of the cosmos become details incidental to the organic dispensation. At least in standard evolutionary theory the existence of life is logically bound up with the wider cosmos. But even if standard evolution is wrong my guess is that whatever the history of life’s development may be, that history is intimately connected to the cosmos; life is some function of cosmic dimensions and cosmic parameters; for then the cosmos no longer seems a "waste of space" but a necessary accessory to life. (Robert Sheldon is an example of a anti-evolutionist who has some intriguingly radical theories on panspermia that do at least connect life’s history to cosmic conditions)

Video Item 09: Life is a happy by product of an environment rather than the environment being designed for life. For example, is the atmosphere designed for sky diving? Was the wind designed for wind surfing?

My Comments: This one comes under the heading of what Sir John Polkinghorne aptly describes as the “fruitfulness” of God’s creation. Given the particular physical regime that governs our cosmos, this then implies a configuration space consisting of all that is possible within the constraints of that regime. This configuration space is a static platonic object and the layout of the configurations in this space determines whether the “shufflings of happenstance” (Another phrase I have picked up from Polkinghorne) is conducive to the Polkinghorne’s “fruitfulness”. For example, clearly “technological configuration space” is so arranged as to allow the quantum of human intelligence, (which I represent by “i”), to traverse it successfully; for human intelligence is not great enough to jump the huge gap between the stone age and the jet age in one generation, but it can jump the smaller gaps between the islands of functionality in “technological configuration space” as evidenced by the succession of artifacts in technological history that have lead up to the development of jet aircraft. A jet aircraft is the result of a long historical development of many technological innovations that have occurred in a piecemeal fashion; a product of the shuffling of human happenstance. It is the arrangement of artifacts in technological configuration space that allows human intelligence to traverse it in small technological leaps. Those artifacts are arranged in configuration space in a way that allows the quantum of human intelligence, i, to migrate from one innovation to the next. If this wasn’t so then the making a jet aircraft would be as improbable as Fred Hoyle’s Junkyard Jumbo. So, in answer to video I regard the wind surfing and sky diving as part of the built-in technological fruitfulness of our physical regime, a fruitfulness that also includes wind turbines, and flying. My conjecture is that a randomly selected physical regime would be unlikely to possess this fruitfulness, and thus we are likely to be talking here of something with a high “specified complexity”.

However, whether or not the configuration space of living structures can also be fruitfully traversed by the random shufflings of happenstance is a moot point.

Video Item 10: Science investigates researches, explains and tests hypotheses. There is no comparable testing and investigation available for the God hypothesis. With contemporary Cosmological theory there is the possibility for real data and some chance of testing these theories unlike for God. Where is the derivation for God? Where’s the chance to test this hypothesis? Religion gives up and says “a magic man did it”

My Comments. As I have made clear already in this series, the hard sciences (physics in particular) use a pair of explanatory object types that I refer to as “Law and Disorder”. “Laws” are functions subject to the Church-Turing Thesis in that they are pattern generating functions that can be rendered computationally. “Disorder” are patterns that yield to statistical description. In the video Alan Guth says he has no idea why the laws of physics are what they are. That’s no surprise to me: There is, I believe, a fundamental reason why Guth must say this: For without getting into a “Turtles all the way down” regress where Law and Disorder explanation gets stuck in a kind of self referential loop, physics naturally comes to an end once full description has been achieved (i.e. a “Theory of Everything” as it is called). If we are going to ask why the laws of physics work, then that question, as far as physics is concerned, is meaningless. A science of the mathematically elemental can provide no deeper answer “why” than in the giving of an exhaustive descriptive account of the status quo. (If indeed such is actually possible)

Given the huge number of possible patterns that can exist it is clear that there is a very large class of pattern that are too ordered to be amenable to statistical treatment, and yet too complex to be rendered with mathematical functions in a realistic time using serial computation. There is, therefore, a large class of patterns that are in principle intractable to “Law and Disorder” science. Potentially, then, there are objects out there that are not tractable to science as we currently understand it. If such exist in our reality they would not be amenable to derivation and testing. Thus, contrary to the suggestion of the video scientific intractability is no reason to rule them out: Because something doesn’t yield to research, derivation and testing is not sufficient condition for its nonexistence. All we can do is thank our lucky bunny (I don’t know what atheists thank; “bunny” is all I could come up with) that so much of our world is apparently amenable to our finite science.

But an “in principle” scientific intractability is compounded by practical intractability. Given that our world is mathematically chaotic and subject to random quantum perturbations means that even if we assume Law and Disorder offers a full description of the world it yet remains beyond our practical powers to describe much of that world with anything other than ex post facto narrative. Further compounding the tractability problems of science is the fact that data is, humanly speaking, irretrievably lost in the mists of time. Thus the inaccessibility and complex contingency of history is open to the same criticisms the video levels against theism: In history there is little in the way of derivation and testing that parallels the theories of the hard physical sciences. In many cases there is no possibility of real data and a chance of a theory being testable. In between stumbling on the occasional fortuitously surviving text or archeological artifact, history remains dependent on the experienced historian’s imagination to fill in the gaps for us.

The video’s beguiling arguments are nearly as devastating to history as they are to God. It is naive to think that one can approach God, (or history for that matter) in the manner that one might approach the elemental Law and Disorder objects of the hard sciences. If anything God’s complexity and inaccessibility makes for a far more scientifically intractable object than even history. If God was subject to Law and Disorder research it wouldn’t be God; the object would be far too elemental for that. This, of course, doesn’t mean there is such an object as God; but if there is a God, the unimaginative mindset of the video producers, whose theology only seems to extend as far as "a magic man", obstructs any chance of seeking him let alone of finding him.

From one mankind he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. Acts 17:26-27

Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Is 55:6

Alien, Very Alien, Intelligent Design

Interesting is this post on Uncommon Descent which manifests a phenomenon I have become very familiar with; namely, anti-evolutionists attempting to form a cartel with atheist evolutionists on the basis of their mutual belief that “Darwinism” gives God his redundancy notice . “I don’t need that hypothesis” as the saying goes; as if God is a "Law & Disorder" hypothesis. 

In fact, the anti-evolutionists may go as far as to express admiration and respect for atheists who candidly spell out the “materialistic” conclusions of “Darwinism”. I suspect the respect is one way, although I have sneaky suspicion that the new wave atheists don’t mind at all when theists also caricature evolution as a mindless process based on chance. In this article on  the Christian web site Network Norwich and Norfolk James Knight notes that many new wave atheists started their life as Christians, thus hinting at some link between gnu atheism and Christianity. I added a comment to his article noting the apparent cartel forming behavior I have already mentioned and proposed that this may have something to do with the link. The cartel is used by fundamentalists to apply spiritual duress on Christian evolutionists: As James Knight says:

Yes we see a peculiar defense of fundamentalism take place, where, in order to dismiss theistic evolution they (the fundamentalists) put on a new-wave atheist's mask and quote their usual sound-bytes in the hope that theistic evolutionists will begin to stink of ‘Darwinism’, and qualify to the point of ex-communication.

***

It is an irony that one reason I can’t get evolutionary theory off my desk is precisely because of intelligent design. The engineering behind life is, within a little, not far from our intellectual reach. In contrast, evolution demands computational problems to be resolved that are way beyond both our intellects and our current computational technology. Above all, the problems of implementing an evolutionary system are all but impossible to resolve in realistic time via a purely stochastic system.

However, I'll grant that evolution cuts across many standard theological expectations: In the UD post I've linked to we find Denyse O’Leary saying:

Christian Darwinists struggle to convince Christians to jettison deeply held beliefs in order to embrace Darwin.

If evolution, or something similar to it, is the fruitful process that has generated the configurations of life then the “specified complexity” of its necessary preconditions are beyond human computation. The prerequisites of evolution, then, are evidence that we are dealing with a very alien form of intelligence. As the Good Book says (Is 55: 8-9)

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the LORD.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Just how alien is clear from the context of the above verses  (Is 55: 6-7)

Seek the LORD while he may be found;

call on him while he is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way

and the evil man his thoughts.

Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him,

and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

“Free pardons for all who turn….” violates the mindset of the “God will pay them back” mentality that pervades so much of man’s theology.

As I have said before: I have a reserved view of evolution, but we should not reject evolution for the wrong reasons: ID alone is not good enough reason for rejecting it, especially as we are dealing with such an alien intelligence.

Does Intelligent Design Creationism Make Testable Scientific Predictions? Part 1

ID has the potential for too many googlies to be a hard science.

This post on Uncommon Descent (UD) is entitled “Does ID Make Testable Scientific Predictions?”. The post provides a list of ID predictions.

Before I look at this list in detail in part 2 here are some general comments:

Strictly speaking the phrase “Intelligent Design Creationism” covers a multitude of sins (the gnu atheists would certainly think of them as sins!). For example, Sir John Polkinghorne calls himself an Intelligent Design creationist, but Sir John is an evolutionist and in his view Divine intelligence is needed to set up and run a physical regime whose evolutionary fruitfulness is a sign of God’s providence.

I would also classify myself as an “Intelligent Design Creationist”, at least in the sense that Sir John understands it; for if evolution is to work, (i.e. it is fruitful) it must be resourced by the selection of some remarkable preconditions, effectively giving it the “specified complexity” that some ID theorists talk about. In other words evolution would require a considerable level of intelligence to contrive. However, I must admit to having some reservations about evolutionary theory and I respect the criticisms of evolution by some of the correspondents one finds on UD. But having said that I must say that I have not yet been able to get the concept of evolution off my “examination bench” and eliminate it from the enquiry.

On UD itself we find a very wide range of opinion on how life arose; views expressed run from Old Earth theistic evolution through evolution with an “intelligent assist”, to the occasional YEC contributor. The balance of opinion on UD may be skewed toward Old Earth, but most commentators are rabidly anti-evolution. This vehement anti-evolutionism is probably down to the polarizing effects of what has turned out to be a very acrimonious debate, even between fellow theists. An outcome of that polarization is that the phrase “Intelligent Design” now has the de-facto meaning of “anti-evolution”, the unspoken innuendo being that theistic evolutionists don’t accept intelligent design!

It is for this reason that people like John Polkinghorne and Biologos are unwilling to identify themselves with the so-called “ID” community that UD stands for. They may even be unwilling to use the phrase “Intelligent Design” to describe themselves. Meanings matter and today “ID” means “anti-evolution” and in the minds of Biologos it probably also means “anti-science”. Just as polarization has made it look as though theistic evolutionists are anti-ID, UD has been made to look like part of an “anti-science” community. Thus, as theistic evolutionists stand accused of promoting religious heresy, UD stands accused of promoting scientific heresy. In truth, neither charge stands, in my opinion.

Occasionally one reads a post on UD that bemoans the poor relations between the Biologos and UD, especially as it is clear that in the final analysis they must both support ID creationism in the truest sense of the words. The fault is on both sides: UD has some vociferous anti-evolutionist correspondents who caricature evolution as a blind, mindless process derisively referring to Biologos as compromising “Darwinists”. Biologos, who probably have some measure of kudos in the scientific establishment, don’t want to risk their scientific credibility by parleying with UD, who they probably look down on with haughty superiority as guilty of hobnobbing with superstitious anti-science rubes. The division between the communities respectively represented by Biologos and UD is down to passion and polarization and not a fundamental disagreement in the essential core belief in ID

The following preamble indicates that polarization has resulted in a distortion of the meaning of the phrase “Intelligent Design Creationism” and shifted its meaning toward anti-evolutionism and the fundamentalist end of the religious spectrum. This in turn has obscured the fact that “ID creationism”, in its truest sense, covers the full spectrum from Christian evolutionists to YECs.

Now, why do I say all this? What’s it got to do with ID predictions? This: What it shows is that as far as making predictions is concerned ID has got its work cut out: For if ID belief covers the full range from establishment evolutionists to Young Earth Creationism one can legitimately query if belief in ID materially effects one’s expectation about how the cosmos should look. In short, it seems that it is extremely difficult to make any predictions at all from an ID position. Naturally, if the world is designed by intelligence then it is clear that we are dealing with a very abstracted non-embodied intelligence and therefore in one sense a very alien intelligence whose purposes and works are likely to have a large measure of inscrutability. I say this as a supporter of ID.

For myself I much prefer the a softer, fuzzier, less hard science view of ID: ID is a philosophical, theological and perhaps even mythological/metaphorical backdrop structure with which one attempts to understand and make sense of the most general features of the world. Its main utility is less prediction than it is "joining the dots" of what we already know, with particular regard to origins (For reasons I have given in my “Middlebrow Atheism” series it is clear that standard science has no chance of making any ultimate human sense of origins) At the core of ID is the concept of a complex entity whose alien intelligence is unlikely to lend itself to the making of hard predictions. However, the question of whether UD have actually succeeded in making some predictions will have wait for part 2 of this post. I rather think you will find what UD call “ID predictions” are in actual fact “anti-evolutionist” expectations rather than ID predictions per se.

Fancy a World Cruise? No Planks!

Sink or Swim? Probably both.

PZ Myers and his rabid raiders have found another target for their favourite pastime of lampooning the uber-crackpot schemes and ideas of Christian fundamentalists. The latest flight of fancy is the brain dump of Dutchman Johan Huibers who, like Ken Ham’s AiG, is building a full size ark, except that unlike Ken Ham Huibers is putting his beliefs (and perhaps his life) on the line. According to the The Dutch Daily News:

When completed, the full-size Noah's Ark will remain in Dordrecht until the middle of 2012, when Huibers then plans to take his ship around the world, beginning with London in time for the Olympic Games.

I’m not an expert in wooden boat construction but, the boat looks very flimsy, a kind of floating garden shed made of spindly pine posts and thin planks. (see this YouTube video). I don’t fancy Huibers’ chances in a heavy swell.

HMS Victory: A Floating Tree Trunk

Looking at the video I compared it with my visit to HMS victory (see above), a wooden boat with sides 2 feet thick which leaves one with the impression of it being made of whole oak tree trunks. In fact once inside the Victory it feels like being inside a tree trunk. However, at around 200 feet in length it is less than half the linear size of the Ark.

Victory Gun Deck.

It is well known that beam strength scales with the square of its thickness but weight scales with the cube of dimension. This means that as linear size increases weight goes up faster than strength. Hence, the bigger a wooden boat is the greater percentage of its interior must be devoted to wooden structure. So, it is not surprising that HMS victory employs such thickness of oak. In comparison the insides of Huibers’ Ark looks like a matchstick cathedral.

Huibers' Garden Shed Technology.

Note: Rumour has it that Huibers' boat actually has a steel substructure. Basically it's a wooden shack on a steel barge; a game of let's pretend, in a land of make believe, aptly symbolising fundamentalism. (What's the betting that  Huibers will be in the iron ship towing his plank box around the  world?)

Latest Gun Fight Debate: Craig vs. Harris.

I recently posted a blog entry giving the final “score” in a William Lane Craig vs Lawrence Krauss debate, where indications were that Craig had “won”. To be fair, then, I must report on this debate between Craig and Sam Harris entitled "Is good from God". According to Arni Zachariassen “they came out about even”. PZ Myers, on the other hand, thinks, it was a “total rout” in favour of Harris; *Methinks PZ exaggerateth too much*. This vehemently expressed opinion might just have something to do with the fact that Myers is obviously very much in agreement with Harris whatever the outcome of the debate. Therefore he is naturally going to be swayed by notoriously fickle predictors. Viz: “Craig lost on style”, “Harris….spoke thoughtfully and with sincerity…” and “...on body language and tone, Harris is engaging you and speaking from the heart, while Craig is stiff, strident, and running through the well-worn grooves of repetitive theological rationalizations.” If you really hate someone like Myers hates Craig their manner alone is going to cause irritation and leave you wide open to auto suggestive misinterpretations of their style and body language.

The result of debates like this is no doubt very much in the eyes of the beholder, but I think on balance Arni’s cool opinion “they came out about even” wins the day for me. But there is also this: I don’t agree with the view that PZ attributes to Craig: “If we don't ground our moral beliefs in a God, then we do not have a sound foundation for our morality”. After all, the good book itself says:

(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. (Romans 2:14-16)

So, although atheists (which I identify here with “gentiles”) may not be able to found a morality in an ontology of cosmic import, their hearts will provide a compelling witness as to what is right and they can, if they are inclined, successfully anchor their morality on this. (But anchoring a morality is one thing, following it is quite another; the latter may best prosper under Divine grace) My opinion, then, is that Craig should have “lost”. But the fact that Craig secured a “draw” when, in fact, he should have lost is a sign that he is a pretty smart operator!

No News is Good News

The Good News is invisible to anti-evolutionists and anti-theists.

I’ve been talking with James Knight about why people find it so difficult to see that “law and disorder” science can never arrive at a final explanation in the deeper sense of providing aseity. There are probably several reasons for this, the “Luddite Effect” being one of them.

Other effects may have something to do with the abstruseness of scientific explanation which prevents people seeing what’s actually happening: The general “data compression” effect of physical explanation, if naively extrapolated, could wrongly be construed as showing that eventually it is possible to get something for nothing. Another possible effect making it look as though scientific explanation trivializes problems away may be down to the likely fact that human (and animal) perceptions are wired up to take most notice of interruptions in the status-quo i.e. a change is newsworthy, no change can be ignored. Thus no change in the status quo registers as "nothing there". We know, of course, that in an absolute sense something is there, something rather than nothing and we can see that reality entails an irreducible a logical discontinuity, the Grand Logical Hiatus as I call it. But it seems that people only see a discontinuity if it is plastered across the time axis as an explicit change in the temporal status quo. Change and difference is something which cries out for explanation, whereas it is tempting to feel that the uniform, the common place, and the boring, do not. Therefore if all change can be explained in terms of some sort of status quo such as unalterable Quantum Mechanical laws, then one might be tempted to think that the holy grail of science, a “complete explanation”, has been reached. However, what is more difficult to see is that even a static status quo has a discontinuity in "logical space" - discontinuities in time are easier to perceive than discontinuities in logical space.

The reason I raise this matter is not just because atheists like Richard Dawkins claim to be intellectually satisfied by scientific explanation and thus are responding to the array of factors I mention above. Ironically it is also the anti-evolutionists who think similarly; they too, I suggest, subliminally feel that evolution is in danger of providing intellectual satisfaction without God and thus as I have said before they cannot come to terms with evolution. This is something I have actually pointed out several times in this blog, but if you look here on Uncommon Descent you will find a fine example of it where you will read:

While there is little doubt about the desire of theistic evolutionists to maintain their commitment to theism, it is pertinent to ask what follows logically from the scientific acceptance of some forms of theistic evolution, especially those that claim that it must be understood within methodological naturalism where all evidence of God’s handiwork is excluded from science by definition……What follows logically is a silent God and a loud Darwin.

My guess is that what prompts this kind of response to “Darwinism” are the sort of effects I have identified above: Science has the psychological effect of masking the sheer unwarranted contingency of the cosmos; in particular evolution gives the impression that form and function are fully explained. And yet as I have said elsewhere, evolution, if it has occurred, is likely to require far from trivial mathematical preconditions. The trouble is that these preconditions are logically abstruse and not as “in yer face” as a God who poofs stuff into existence “as is, just like that”. These preconditions are likely to register as “no news” in the human psyche and therefore for the anti-evolutionists they are bad news.

Cut Me Some Slack.

In this blog post atheist Larry Moran criticizes the Intelligent Design community for their negative evolution bashing and their failure to advance a positive science of Intelligent Design. He says:

Any objective view of the IDiot literature reveals that attacks on evolution constitute >99% of their activity. It's rare to find an article or book that presents a positive case for a creator design.

Given my experience of the anti-evolution movement I have to agree that that statement is a good approximation of the state of anti-evolutionist ID theory.

Larry Moran is responding to a blog post by Denise O’Leary on Uncommon Descent where she asks whether ID researchers are making positive progress:

That said, a legitimate question raised by thoughtful people is, why don’t ID-friendly researchers do positive research? Why do they just go on proving that Darwinism doesn’t work?

Guess who she blames for a lack of progress?......

I too look forward to the day that ID researchers are free to do positive work, but right now we are swamped in a Darwinism whose fraudulence is often unrecognized because it is so often ridiculous. . So, as with counterfeit money, the first goal is to demonstrate that much intellectual currency is bogus……So can good money ever drive out bad? Yes, but it is tough slogging.

“Darwinists” like Larry Moran, then, not only have to face a barrage of destructive criticism about their life’s work, but they also get the blame for ID theorist’s inability to do little else other than to engage in a science of negation. This, to my mind, is very unfair.

The lack of positive scientific progress amongst the anti-evolutionist community has, in my opinion, much more to do with the nature of Intelligent Design itself rather than “Darwinism”. 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so: For archeologists the existence of human beings that have long gone and done their stuff in the depths of time is a given: Archeology doesn’t seek to explain humanity; humanity is axiomatic in that discipline. Thus, given the highly complex and inscrutable causal agent that human culture is, it is no surprise that for archeologists artifacts such as Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, Avebury, Carnac and the like are going to be difficult to interpret and aspects of their purpose and methods of construction may forever remain a mystery, lost in the mists of time. In Theistic Design Theory it is God that is axiomatic and clearly we are postulating here a far more complex, mysterious, inaccessible and alien an object than even ancient human cultures. It follows, then, that if living things were directly engineered via some second creative dispensation over and above physics, it is likely that the exact processes involved will forever remain a mystery. Moreover, making predictions about what that Infinitely Strange Entity has done and for what purpose is also likely to be a very hazardous hit and miss affair: Who knows, He/She/It might even fancy splicing in a bit of “junk DNA” into the genome for inscrutable reasons; God, after all, moves in mysterious ways, as any faith worth its salt understands.

Therefore those who believe that life is a result of a second creative dispensation will just have to accept that like archeology it is in the nature of their discipline that that discipline is likely to make a lot less progress than even prehistoric archeology. It is therefore grossly unjust to blame evolutionists for the slow progress in ID.

I’ll confess that I am myself an Intelligent Design Creationist* and therefore I’m postulating  the existence of an  “Ultimate Origins” object (or entity) far more complex and in principle far more inaccessible, and therefore far more subject to the vagaries and foibles of imaginative construction than anything an evolutionist like Larry Moran might have to handle; he only deals in law and disorder. I have to deal with the Bible and as people who are in touch with reality know all too well, there are as many Bible interpretations as there are Christian sects.

So, I say, let’s leave Larry Moran and other gentleman atheists a little bit of slack shall we?

Footnote

* I actually favour a single dispensation creation paradigm (that is physics; but being a physics phanatic may make me a little biased, however) although I take the criticisms of sensible ID theorists like William Demsbki seriously and believe those criticisms need to be properly and dispassionately engaged.

Silbury Hill. Wiltshire, England.

William “Atheist’s Bane” Craig Shoots Down Another One.

Lawrence Krauss bails out over PZ Myer's blog

Looking at PZ Myers blog down beat posts here and here it seems that the atheists have “lost” another debate with William Lane Craig. OK I’ll accept that debate isn't the ideal medium in which to settle such profound questions as atheism or theism: Smart footwork and tactics may prevail over content. For example, there is the scatter shot tactic whereby one interlocutor fires off a myriad “small targets” in the form of a set superficial claims. Unless the opposing interlocutor has the information at his finger tips and fleetness of foot to intercept and refute each point in turn the impression may be left that he has lost ground. The YEC community, in particular, is adept at assembling a magazine of superficial and ultimately ineffectual points ready to blast off in one big firework display that awes and/or intimidates the simple minded.

I haven’t looked at the debate yet, but let me guess in advance where the atheists fall down: It’s their insistence that “evidence” is everything. No it isn’t; any more than one constructs and learns a language on the basis of the verbal evidence alone: A language can’t be learnt unless one has the preset mental categories and whatnot ready to act as “place holders” for the incoming data. Likewise we have little hope of understanding this Cosmos unless we have the mental prerequisites in place ready to theorize successfully about the data.

Of course, we can then turn the science of observation and theory onto our own mental faculties, but that leads to self referencing issues and atheists in my experience don’t like self-referencing because it’s too philosophical and slippery and it is remarkably free of "empirical handles" (of the "test tube precipitation" standard). But you can bet your bottom dollar that someone as smart as Craig has self-reference off pat and that gives him an edge.

Beyond Our Ken. On Mature Creation. Summing up

The YEC Cosmology: an unintelligible pastiche.

This is the summing up part of my previous posts in this series. The other parts can be found as follows: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

In the first part of this series we saw how Ken Ham much prefers to talk about a “mature creation” or a “fully functioning creation” rather than a creation with the “appearance of age”. According to Ken age cannot be determined from an object. However, this nuancing is a piece of evasive chicanery on behalf of the “Answers in Genesis” supremo, because when all is said and done it becomes clear that Ken and AiG are forced to acknowledge that there is such a thing as an “appearance of history” if not an “appearance of age” and this leads to conflicts, contradictions even, within the YEC movement. For Ken and his friends want the imprimatur of doing some science and so when an object displays blatant evidence of having a history they are obliged to explain it - in terms of history, of course. History is a sequence of events and the structure of many objects - such as the layers we see in archeological and geological sedimentation, like the leaves of diary – are difficult to interpret in any other way than as a sequential assembly spaced out over time. YECs will, in many cases, admit this interpretation but it is then down to the YEC theorist to squeeze that sequence into less than 6000 years. For example, YECs have tried to cobble together “naturalistic” cosmological histories that avoid the “bogus history” accesses of some of the early YECs who claimed that star light was created en-route. They also admit that continental drift is a real phenomenon although of course they require it to take place much faster than in mainstream drift theory; similarly, for the cooling of magma intrusions and the formation of lake varves. All this is amounts to a getting away from naive “God made it just like that” beliefs.

An excursion into the science of origins has forced AiG theorists to make informal decisions as to which objects are historical (that is, objects which display evidence of having a historical sequence in their formation) and which objects are a-historical (that is objects which display no evidence of having a history): If AiG are to remain committed to a rational and coherent world they are obliged to explain historical objects, whereas a-historical objects can be claimed to have been created “as is” without violation of evidence of historical sequencing. In making such strenuous efforts to explain the evidence of star light, continental drift, magma intrusions and the like, AiG has effectively cut across Ken’s views: They are admitting that objects do betray at least evidence of history if not an evidence of age. AiG are courting a very basic contradiction within their organization: On the one hand they will deny the evidences of age and yet on the other AiG theorists are busting a gut to explain how blatant evidences of history are consistent with a 6000 year time scale. Their denial that there is such a thing as an “appearance of age” is a piece of self-deceiving sophistry that is belied by their efforts to mobilize AiG technical resources to explain historical objects. Yes, AiG certainly do care about an “appearance of history” in spite of what they may tell you. They care enough about it to have banned Adam’s belly button at AiG!

The AiG policy of making informal decisions about which objects show evidence of an historical sequence that needs interpretation and which do not, is particularly difficult to implement in cosmology. The trouble is AiG only has 6000 years to play with – in fact, probably a lot less than that in many cases. This creates big problems in the heavens where huge objects like galaxies have dimensions thousands of light years across. As we saw in the last part in this series ultra-fundamentalist John Byl betrays the problems his fellow YECs are facing. For example, Byl points out that galaxies appear to have distant parts apparently in gravitational interaction, but with only light speed signaling being available it is difficult to account for these objects without recourse to bogus history theory. But Byl tells his fellow YECs to relax and face the inevitable; some measure of bogus history theory will simply just have to be accepted by YECs, says Byl – it’s the only way to do it and besides its perfectly moral for God to create in this way: For, says Byl, God is using the heavens to justifiabley deceive unbelieving scientists into believing in an old Cosmos. According to Byl the whole cosmic shooting match is an intended sham and scientists have only got themselves to blame for not seeing through it. Byle’s vision is of an incoherent and irrational postmodern universe that ultimately undermines science. His religious devotion to his sect’s belief in a 6000 year old cosmos overrides all other consideration to the point of irrationality.

Deciding whether an object is truly a-historical is extraordinarily difficult given that form in our cosmos so often betrays evidence that is not easily interpreted as anything other than a sign of a sequential assembly. In fact the general AiG concept of a “fully functioning creation” is itself suggestive of history. For the physical algorithms of a functioning creation, when plainly interpreted, are easy to read as evidence of a cosmos that has existed as far back in time as the algorithm can be extended. But, and this is the important point, not all algorithms can be extended indefinitely into the past any more than halting algorithms can be indefinitely extended into the future: In the attempt to reverse an algorithm a point may be reached beyond which the behavior of the algorithm is undefined. At that point we really do have an object which is truly a-historical and has no bogus history that has to be brushed under the carpet; such an object can be created "as is" with creative integrity remaining intact. The alternative is that we follow the AiG line and simply wait on their decisional fiat as to what is a-historical and therefore can be created ex nihilo, and what is historical and therefore demands an historical theory in order to preserve the integrity of creation science.

But let me at least hand it to them: AiG are busting a gut to be scientific and as a result they are getting embroiled in some deep and difficult questions. To some extent I’ll give them credit for it; they are trying to be consistent. But I fancy you will find YECs out there who feel very uneasy about this engagement with science – these are Christians who sense the crypto-gnostic sentiment that authentic spirituality is naturally adverse to science of any kind because it is “man’s knowledge” and therefore profane. The fideists won’t like it: “ …the creationists have fallen into the trap of being Greeks looking for Wisdom and trying to compete wisdom vs. wisdom” I read on one Christian web site. As if to echo the fideist sentiments of Gnostic Christianity, John Byl, in his book “God and Cosmos” says:

In conclusion, while it is clear that various creationist cosmologies can be constructed, it must be acknowledged that most of these models are rather ad hoc, have not been worked out in much detail and often have few distinctive observational implications. As such they are unlikely to convince skeptics (You bet – ed) …..Almost all creationist models ultimately draw upon the concept of mature creation. While this notion may be logically, observationally and theologically unassailable (because God is allowed to deceive us in Byl’s view – ed) it does have one notable scientific deficiency. It offers very little in the way of detailed explanation for specific features of astronomical observation, other than affirming that that is just how God made things. In that sense Big-Bang cosmology, with all its shortcomings, at least attempts to develop a coherent explanation of many observational features. (p 201)

That is the nearest admission I’ve seen from a YEC that the “God did it, just like that” paradigm ultimately undermines the integrity, coherence, and intelligibility of the observational world; even to the point that it can be regarded as a form of divine deception. It is also an admission that Big Bang Theory is a lot better than YEC cosmologies, although he goes on the imply that modern Big Bang theory has “illusory explanatory powers” and is therefore effectively a simulacrum. He also talks about “divinely revealed facts” and yet fails to see that his undermining of the coherency and intelligibility of the cosmos ultimately undermines the integrity of all revelation whether that revelation is based on an interpretation of Biblical writ or the interpretation of any other part of the observed creation.

But like all YECs Byl’s religious egotism prevents him from identifying the nest of wood boring weevils in his own wood pile – namely, his sect’s interpretation of Genesis 1 which he presumes to call “the supremacy of God’s Word”. To hold close to their breast an insidious incoherence is the challenge that a teeth gritting faith sets before itself. It is the badge of an ostentatious piety that they shout from the roof tops. To sectarian minds this is taken as a sign that sets them apart as God’s privileged remnant.

Middlebrow Atheism. Part 4

Continuing my series on naïve atheism:

Video Item 07: Cosmic “Fine Tuning” is not necessarily as fine as theists think. It is conceivable that other very different environments could host (generate?) life. For example it is now thought that the goldilocks zone in the solar system is not the only possible environment for life: Tidal forces on Europa, Jupiter’s satellite, could produce the “black smoker” environment needed to sustain life well outside the goldilocks zone. Similarly, how do we know that changes in the “fine tuning” constants can’t produce a life permitting universe? Alan Guth says he is not impressed by the fine tuning coincidences: We have no way to deduce from a suite of laws whether or not life will occur.

My Comment: The video is at its best and most subtle on this point. There is a significant issue here.

We’ve seen from previous posts in this series that it is very unlikely the laws of physics are merely an artifact of a selective human perspective on a huge maximally disordered super-universe. In fact it looks as though our cosmos is intrinsically constrained to favour order, for whatever reason. Alan Guth says on the video that he has no idea why the laws of physics are what they are, but whatever they are it is clear that those laws support life. In fact the least we can say is this:

1. The laws of physics provide a construction kit of fundamental parts which, given a suitable environment, permit the assembly of complex ordered self perpetuating configurations.

I don’t think many people could disagree with that. It is patently obvious that self perpetuating configurations can exist under our regime of law and disorder (Those configurations are called “life”). The following assertions, however, are stronger, less obvious and more controversial:

2. Given a suitable environment the laws of physics imply the mathematical existence of a class of self perpetuating configurations forming a large connected region in configuration space – that is, any two configurations are separated by a series of incremental configurational changes which constitutes a path through configuration space where every point on that path is a self perpetuating structure.

3. The aforementioned region of configuration space contains some elementary configurations of realistic probability.

The latter two conditions are a requirement of evolution and for that reason they set alarm bells ringing amongst the anti-evolutionists; their commitment is to irreducible complexity which effectively negates assertions 2 and 3 above. Anti-evolutionists will, of course, accept that the cosmos is fined tuned to sustain life, but not that it is fine tuned to generate life. However, since most atheists are evolutionists I’m going to proceed by assuming these assertions are not problematical. I’m running with the atheist mindset here and seeing where it takes us. In order to get a handle on this matter I assume we are only dealing with physical laws covered by the Church-Turing thesis; that is, physical regimes whose functions can be rendered computationally. I also make the assumption that we are only dealing with suites of laws which can be specified using relatively few bits of information.

The video asks the question:

How do we know that changes in the fine tuning constants can’t produce a life permitting universe?

But why ask this question? What difference does its answer make to the atheist position? The answer to the latter questions is, I believe, answered in my last post on Cosmic Symmetry Viz: There is an implicit and instinctual theology at work here which intuits that if it can be shown our cosmos is not a particularly unique case then this helps support the atheist cause, or at least gives the theists a lot less to crow about. In contrast very special and singular conditions strengthen the theist case by giving the cosmos the touch and feel of intelligent contrivance. Hence if it can be shown that life sustaining/generating conditions are a consequence of most systems of physical laws, then it will be no surprise that our particular physics supports life and the problem of life’s existence seems less likely to be the result of intelligent selection.* On the other hand if amongst the possible suites of physical laws life supporting regimes are very rare then the case for intelligence selection (or a “put up job” as Paul Davies once put it) is intuitively strengthened. So, the pertinent question is this: Is our physical regime one of a very rare breed or is it in no way a special case amongst the possible systems of laws?

Trouble is, asking this question is one thing, answering it is quite another. In this connection Alan Guth makes a very apposite observation. He says that given a suite of physical laws nobody knows how to deduce whether or not life will exist as an outcome of those laws. In fact even given our own well known physical laws it is unlikely we could do this in advance. If evolution has occurred, I suspect that it is one of those computationally irreducible processes that Stephen Wolfram talks a lot about – that is, there is no shorter analytical way of showing that a given suite of laws implies evolution other than to simulate evolution in its entirety in a computation. If evolution is computationally irreducible it is no surprise then that Guth (or anyone else for that matter) has no idea how to do the calculation in a shorter number of steps than the process of evolution itself could do it. But it’s even worse than this: Above I have assumed that the suites of physical laws we are considering can be specified using relatively few bits of information; perhaps a few hundred Kbits of information. But even this relatively small number of bits creates a search space far too large to be humanly tractable; there are far too many suites of physical laws for us to find, let alone trial run to see if they generate life.

Given these difficulties it looks to me that the question of whether or not life supporting physical regimes are common place and passé is not going to be easy to answer; in fact it is probably, an intractable problem. So, my conclusion here is that no firm conclusions can be drawn on this subject; at least not at the moment. (But see footnote **)

However, the discussion so far does give us insight into human theological intuitions. If life is a result of the selection from a class of rare life supporting cases when all cases otherwise seem to be equally possible, this is usually taken to be grist to the mill by the ID theorist. By attempting to deny the very singular nature of a cosmic physical regime which clearly at least sustains life the video is effectively acknowledging that the ID theorist’s design detection algorithm has a certain persuasiveness about it; why else would they see the need to downplay the significance of life supporting conditions by proposing that other physical regimes might support life? I suspect that the atheists behind this video feel very uncomfortable with the idea that our universe may be fined tuned in the sense that it has been selected for reification from a remarkably unique class of life supporting scenerios. The atheist’s game here is to promote that idea that a life supporting cosmos is too common place to warrant the “fine tuning” epithet; in showing the need to classify “fine tuning” as “wrong” rather than “not even wrong” they are actually betraying how compelling “fine tuning” can be if and when we should stumble across it.

Footnotes:

* Although, of course, the problem of sheer existence remains open; that is, the old “why is there something rather than nothing?” type question.

**My guess is that if evolution is possible then the physical regimes that support it are very rare indeed. If this guess is correct and if life on planet Earth has evolved then it follows that our universe is governed by a very significant set of laws. This would mean that the cosmos is highly asymmetrical; that is amongst all the possible    physical regimes that seem to have an equal claim to existence our life supporting regime is the one that has, for some reason, been singled out for ontological reification.

Cosmic Symmetry

Fundamentalists instinctively distrust scientific symmetry.

Christian Fundamentalists, by definition, believe they have a very direct connection with the Divine. Consequently they are very sure of their respective spiritual positions, positions which will be based on some blend of gnosis and Biblical legalism. Convinced of the divine authority of their own opinions they will presume to speak in the name of the Almighty, readily condemning those they perceive to be heretics. They are likely to feel uncomfortable with Harries Formula “Meaning = Text + Context”, because for them divine meaning is unambiguous and clear, demanding little in the way of interpretative context, a context which in any case they will probably identify as a corrupting influence. (And yet they themselves must make use of contextual resources in order to interpret texts!) For fundamentalists “compromise” is a dirty word and consequently when fundamentalists holding conflicting versions of “revelation” meet it is a meeting of the irresistible force and the immoveable object; the subsequent contention can be short, sharp and acrimonious.

The kind of altercation I speak of is exemplified in my “Fundamentalist Argument Clinic” series which I showcased on my Views, News and Pews blog (see here, here and here). However, fascinating as it is, this classic meeting of opposing fundamentalist minds is not what I want to focus on here. I actually would like to draw attention to the following comments by one of the contributors, “Geocentric Believer” (=GB). Viz:

Copernicanism is as evil as Darwinism. In fact Darwinism is just another type of Copernicanism applied to the animal Kingdom, making man insignificant, just like Copernicanism does. Copernicanism came before Darwinism and is the thin end of the wedge that takes us away from the Word of God. If you believe in Copernicanism you are compromising the clear Word of God.

As I keep trying to tell you g.s. Darwinism is linked to Copernicanism. In belittling God's created Earth Copernicanism paved the way for Darwinism.

Copernicanism came first. It demoted God's place for the Earth by removing it from the spatial origin of His Creation, just as the claimed billions of years removed the Earth from the temporal origin of Creation. Copernicanism paved the way for an Old Earth and Darwinism.

Copernicanism set us up for all this rot about us being just an accident in a remote and obscure corner of the universe with no special status to protect us from apocalyptic meteor impacts. And g.s. foolishly thinks it's unimportant.

There is a theme here that leads us into very deep waters indeed.

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The advance of science has been marked by the progressive discovery of what may be referred to as “symmetries”. The symmetry I have in mind is of the mathematical kind; that is, the sort of object where operations like rotation, motion, displacement, and reflection etc. leave the object unchanged. For example, if you rotate a perfect circle by any number of degrees it remains exactly the same; it is infinitely symmetrical with respect to rotation. Roughly speaking I suppose “symmetry” translates as “sameness”. It is this concept of “sameness” that, I think, is at the bottom of GB’s deep theological misgivings about Copernicus.

You see, when Galileo famously and abrasively argued for Copernicanism he was endorsing a form of symmetry - the Earth now became “symmetrical” with respect to the other planets; it lost its special central place and became “just another planet”. Moreover, by the days of Newton gone was the planetary quintessence and the music of the spheres, to be replaced by a solar system described using very Earthy laws. Copernicanism, then, could be thought of as the thin end of the wedge of what is now the accepted history of intellectual progress: The Earth became just another planet. The Sun became just another star. The Solar System became just another solar system. The Galaxy become just another galaxy. And so on right up to the “Perfect Cosmological Principle” touted by Fred Hoyle, a principle stating that the universe looks everywhere the same in space and time. Hoyle’s ideas seemed at first to conflict with Big Bang Theory, but the essential concept behind the Perfect Cosmological Principle has since been revived in the eternal chaotic inflation theory, a theory I mentioned in my last blog post on middlebrow atheism. (see here) Moreover, what GB refers to as “Darwinism” can be construed as yet another theoretical imposition of a bland symmetry on the universe: In the evolutionary context Man is no longer seen as a vitalistic being but just another evolved configuration of matter, and who knows what other evolutions have taken place on other planets, thus making Earth just another pretty nondescript location even from a biological stand point. It is this progressive demotion of the once pinnacle of creation which, I submit, worries GB, a demotion which he expresses as “… making man insignificant, belittling God's created Earth with no special status”

In my last Middlebrow Atheism post I mentioned an even more extreme form of symmetry – that is, the disposing of all laws of physics and assigning probability as uniformly (in other words, symetrically) as possible over the whole configurational domain; in this cosmos of maximum disorder the laws of physics are purely a chance effect. This comprehensive super-universe is only topped by Max Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis: As the MUH Wiki page says: Tegmark has… formulated the 'Ultimate ensemble theory of everything', whose only postulate is that 'all structures that exist mathematically exist also physically' . Tegmark’s proposal is an attempt to get away from any idea that only one platonic construction (namely, our own cosmos) has been specially singled out amongst all the platonic possibilities and selected for reification by an unknown choosing agent, an agent that theists readily identify with deity. In Tegmark's super-universe, no mathematical structure has a preferred status; that is, they all have the same ontological status.

Science’s Law and Disorder paradigm cannot provide an answer to the age old question of why there is something rather than nothing, and without getting into a “turtles all the way down” regress, science ultimately goes little deeper than succinct description. A theist therefore might find the sheer existence of the universe meaningful, whatever its scientifically described configuration may be. On other hand, for atheists, brute existence is a poor proof of God and the ultimate meaninglessness of the cosmos is likely to be argued for using one these hyper-symmetric cosmic models where the probability spectrum is as uniform and bland as possible, with no outcomes appearing to be specially weighted. Our theological intuitions tells us that deity is unlikely to create an apparently meaningless universe like this. Those intuitions prefer the idea that a very particular cosmic configuration, amongst all the possible configurations, has been singled out by God, thus giving our cosmos special meaning. Set against the hyper-symmetric super-universes there seems to be an implicit theological expectation that God would create a highly asymmetrical universe, and especially a very singular universe that favours life. To GB’s instincts, then, the Copernican cosmos was the start of the slippery slope leading down to the symmetrical trivialisation of God’s pinnacle of creation of man and his immediate setting.

The fundamentalist finds himself fighting a rearguard action against science’s progress toward symmetry. GB and geocentrists like him are attempting to go back to a time before they see things starting to go wrong; back to pre-Copernicanism, in other words. There is, in fact, overwhelming evidence that our universe is fundamentally highly asymmetrical: In a universe where probabilities are symmetrically distributed, the persistence of order that we see in our own very particular cosmos is extremely improbable. Therefore it follows that our kind of ordered universe does have a special weighting. But this abstruse point is unlikely to cut much ice with the no-nonsense Christian fundamentalist who much prefers a cosmos more obviously punctuated with the asymmetries of an unambiguous creative fiat closer to home; so close to home, in fact, that according to GB it is right under our feet as we stand at the centre of a universe that rotates around the Earth in a single day!