Clear Conscience Atheism.

It is with great sadness that I record the recent death of my brother-in-law Jonathan Benison. His obituary can be found here.

Jonathan had a busy career in teaching but nevertheless had the time to be a caring, sacrificial and successful family man. His commitment to family life extended beyond his nuclear family: I was very impressed when as late as May of this year he made the tedious journey from Paris with his Italian wife Daniela to my son’s wedding in London even though at that stage his health was clearly being impacted by the ravages of cancer.

Jon’s many pupils no doubt benefited from his literary erudition. In fact I myself was inspired by some of his work. I have in my possession three treasured books which would not have been possible without Jon’s input. These books can be seen in the photo below:

These books are:

Imago Mundi:. [1995 Biblos] This is a quality production on the history of cosmology by Francesco Bertola. Jonathan provided the section of this book that contains the English translation from the Italian. It is a good read for those who want a scholarly overview of the history of human perspectives on cosmology. (While we are on the subject of translations from the Italian, see the following blog entries where I provide some of Jon’s translations of the songs of Franscesco Guccini: See below and here  and here. He did these translations in the last two years of his life)

Brave New World: [1991 Cideb Editrice] This book contains Jon’s editorial commentary for English literature students.

The Time Machine: [1994 Cideb Editrice] This is another book containing Jon’s editorial expositions.

As I’m not a literary man I greatly benefited from Jon’s learning. In particular I found his found his exposition of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine extremely illuminating. This was a book that had fascinated me from my youth when I first read it (in 1967). In fact I found Jon’s commentary so inspiring that it prompted to I write a two part essay called “The Riddle of the Sphinx”. I may make those essays available on this blog at some stage, although they are not really recommended reading: Unlike Jon I’m not a fluent writer and I really only write as means of using it to crystalize my thinking and to ward off boredom. (It’s a kind of therapy for me)

Jon was an atheist and knowing him to be a deep and fair thinker he would undoubtedly have had good reasons to be so: I do not accept the common evangelical view that somehow all atheists are knowingly rebelling against God and have bad consciences (Fundamentalists may use their reading of Romans 1 to impeach the consciences of atheists). Amongst other reasons for rejecting religion I know that Jon had seen more than enough of the institutionalized nastiness of authoritarian religion and the conceits and deceits of the fundamentalists; such religion has the finger prints of flawed humanity all over it. In fact I’ve been all but put off Christianity by such people myself, so I’m sure Jon was justified in being repulsed by it all.

Although I'm seriously courting theism I never really had the chance to talk about theism & atheism with Jon. But a few months before his death (and after he had read some of my blog material) he emailed me about the subject and I had the opportunity to put my position before him.

As a theist what can I say about Jon’s atheism? For me a Biblical writer expresses it well:

For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (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, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. Romans 2:13-16

If there is a next world and given that the gospel of Christ is about love, justice, sacrifice, mercy and above all grace, then in my opinion someone like Jonathan Benison ought to be well received in that world.

"Letter" by Franscesco Guccini:

Translation:

The cherry-tree in the garden has come into bloom with the new sunshine

The neighbourhood is soon filled with snow from the poplars and with words.

At one o’clock on the dot the clatter of plates reaches the ears

The TVs’ thunderous rumble meets the unfazed indifference of the cats;

As you can see, everything’s normal in this pointless sarabande

But blowing through this unchanging pattern of life is the whiff of a question,

The prickly presence of an eternal doubt, what’s past seething like an ants’ nest,

Troubling those who leave it till winter to wish it were summer again.

The streets are coming back to life, a perfect finishing touch to the world,

Mother and daughter brazenly parade the same face and round bottom,

Identical in the head, no history, challenging everything, no limits,

Their strutting briefly outdone by the wailing of swallows and children;

As you can see, nothing out of the ordinary in this cumulus of life and death,

But, sobering thought, I’m not unhappy stuck in this rut of wishes and fate,

This over-shiny net, these goals we dream up for ourselves,

This unquenchable thirst, of those who hold back, unwilling to fly.

Slowly the roses wither, clusters of fruit appear on the apple-trees,

High up, clouds pass silently through the strips of cobalt-blue sky;

I lie stretched out on the fantastic green-grass plane of my past

But just-like-that age dispels all I believed and have not been;

As you can tell, everything’s just fine in this world free of worries,

As life skimmed past me, I correctly discussed the set topics,

My enthusiasms never lasted long, lots of philosophising stances,

A life of amusing encounters turned tragic, some too close for comfort, some not close enough.

But the times gone by, who will return them to me? Who’ll give me back the seasons

Of glass and sand, who can bring back rage and gestures, women and songs,

The lost friends, books I devoured, the simple enjoyment of appetites,

The healthy thirst of the parched, the blind faith in poor myths?

As you can see, everything’s as usual, just that time is pressing and the suspicion arises

That it’s not a big deal to be weary and breathless at the end of a race,

To be anxious as people are the day after, or sad at the end of a match,

No big deal the slow aimless unfolding of this thing that you call life.

Translated by Jonathan Benison

It’s Science Larry, But Not As You Know It

Real Science is far more precipitous than the test tube precipitating and spring extending view of science cares to admit. 

Biochemist professor Larry Moran often tells us that “Science is way of knowing”. Most philosophically literate people, however, understand the probationary status of all claimed human “knowing”. For this reason I myself would much prefer to opt for the quip: Science is way of reaching an understanding; an understanding that doesn’t necessarily entail authentic knowledge.

But Larry goes much further than just asserting that science is way of knowing; to him there are no other authentic ways of knowing. It is therefore no surprise to see him in this post taking exception to psychologist’s Maria Konnikova’s suggestion that the humanities aren’t science. My view own on Konnikova’s statement is that in a very generalised sense the humanities are science, but they are a far cry from the test tube precipitating and spring extending experiments of the physical sciences, sciences where we deal with relatively simple elemental stuff. In short we are talking here of the difference between hard and soft science. The fact is not all ontologies with which we have to grapple are on an equal level in terms of their amenability to scientific probing. Objects vary on a sliding scale according to their accessibility, repeatability, testability and complexity and this impacts the level of formalism, clarity, equivocality, and rigour with which conclusions can be drawn. In turn this reflects the amount of guess work and imagination that is brought to bear in arriving at an understanding (as opposed to a knowing) of less tractable phenomena. In fact, I suspect that the linear progression of data acquisition is swamped by the exponentiating complexity of some higher level objects (especially in psychology and sociology) and thus it is likely that science, when up against some ontologies, ultimately faces fundamental barriers to progress.

Biochemist Larry Moran may yearn for the level of unequivocation reached in the physical sciences but I think he is out of kilter when it comes to subjects like politics, sociology, history, psychology, and even evolution. Of course, people can refrain from stating anything at all in these domains until they have attained the standard of “proof” that is on a level with the relatively amenable material of the test tube precipitating and spring extending sciences. But given the hardness of the objects dealt with by the soft sciences this is likely to result in very little being said with any rigour; the choice is between saying nothing at all, or taking one's best shot. The fall back situation is the expedient of using the imagination to elaborate upon a paucity of agreed facts. The procedure in the soft sciences is less that of setting up predictive tests than it is retrospectively embedding a consensus of facts into a plausible theoretical framework, a framework that acts as a sense making structure for those facts. Hard predictions are hard to come by and the lack of the impartial arbitrator of reality stepping in to confirm predictions means that in the soft sciences (which includes large tracts of evolutionary theory in my opinion), arriving at a consensus of conclusions is a contentious business: Just what constitutes a “best fit” narrative is not dictated by any clear cut mathematical criterion; we are not simply trying to fit curves to dots.

The other issue some physical scientists are likely to stumble on is the question of testability. It is truism in my opinion that ultimately all claimed knowledge is empirical in the sense that it must meet the challenge of our experiences – see the short article on my side bar entitled “The Ideas-Experience Contention”. I would even go as far as to say that religion is thoroughly empirical in as much as it attempts to make retrospective sense of experience (although one has to admit religion is big on the imagination and small on the consensus facts it tries to integrate into a world view). With post-hoc sense making narratives the “test” of experience exists only in as far as one attempts to evaluate how well these narratives successfully integrate post-hoc experience. Unfortunately the objects this kind of science deals with are complex, and difficult to access and control; therefore experimental testing at will may not be an option. There is one other thing that adds a further complication: “Experience”, so called, often turns out to be the words of other texts and narratives that are set beside the theoretical narrative under test. This means that the divide between theory and experience is in fact blurred. Text is tested against text rather than direct laboratory observations and the upshot is that social reputation, kudos and a gamut of sociological factors figure prominently even in the hard sciences; not good news for Larry!

Using test tube precipitating and spring extending science as the definitive paradigm of scientific epistemology results in a view of science that fails to make sense of science in its broadest meaning, especially as it is practiced in the necessarily informal atmosphere of the humanities. In fact even physical scientists experience some of the ambiguity one finds in the humanities when it comes to evolution, a theoretical structure which posits a complex history of change and shares a boundary with sociology. Except in the most elementary of cases there is seldom a straightforward one-to-one mapping between our experience and our theoretical objects. Leaps of the imagination have to be employed (cautiously and with fear and trembling) in order to make progress. The upshot is that although science can’t, with any surety, claim to be a way of knowing, it can claim to be a way of understanding, and a successful way at that. And yes, I’m prepared to echo something of Larry Moran in saying that science is the only way of understanding, but then my vision of science may be just a little more inclusive than his version of scientific fundamentalism.

***

Posts that are relevant to the above subject matter can be found here:

1. Homunculus ID as a case study in the difficulties of making prediction with the naturally postdictive science of Intelligent Design: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/does-intelligent-design-make-testable.html

2. The following title speaks for itself: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/science-and-imagination.html

3. Grappling with Larry Moran's views again here: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/on-epistemology.html

Latest News on Jason Lisle and ASC

Relevant Links:
More news here: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/mangling-science-continuing-our-diet-of.html)
Young Earthism's biggest problem part 1: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/no-progress-on-young-earthisms-biggest.html
Young Earthism's biggest problem part 2: https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2018/07/no-progress-on-young-earthisms-biggest.html
Young Earthism's biggest problem part  3: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2020/02/no-progress-on-young-earthisms-biggest.html



I was fascinated to see that we have at last got some movements from Jason Lisle on the relation of gravity to his Anisotropic Synchrony Convention solution to the YEC starlight problem. This can be seen in the comments section of a post dated August 3 on his blog. The post is in fact about something entirely different, but nevertheless an “Age Day creationist” called Kenny had the cheek to use the comments section of the thread to challenge Lisle. (Note: Much of Kenny's criticism suffers from a weakness which stems from the fact that the Edwards' space time is all but "non-physical")

Kenny refers to the “Missing Gravitational Field” and links to an article on Hugh Ross's Web Site where we find the gravitational criticism of ASC mentioned and a reference to a paper on the Edwards space time by Jian Qi Shen (What a coincidence! That’s the sequel to the same paper I referenced in my original criticism of Jason’s theory!) 

Anyway, here’s what Jason says to Kenny: 

> 2) Missing gravitational field:

 I had already planned to deal with this in detail in a future blog entry. But the short answer is: no, ASC does not require a gravitational field. It is simply a coordinate transformation from the ESC. And coordinate transformations do not introduce any real forces. 

 (Editor’s note: ASC = Anisotropic Synchrony Convention and ESC = Einstein Synchrony Convention)

There are at least three conceptual objects that have so far not been clearly distinguished in the discussions over Jason’s “ASC solution”: Firstly there is the Edwards space time which introduces a unidirectional and "non-physical" bias to the speed of light; by "non-physical" I mean that it doesn't effect experimental observations. Secondly, there is the concept of an actual geocentric skew to the speed of light which would introduce a gravitational field (although not of the usual kind). In other words, a geocentric skew to the speed of light is physical and I am sure Jason must understand this. Finally, there is simply the expedient of using of a "suitable" co-ordinate system which is what Jason is clearly laying claim to rather than telling us that light speed has a literal bias in the general direction of the Earth.* Coordinate systems are just ways of labelling “manifolds” of points with lists of numbers with a list-length equal to the dimensionality of the space concerned. For example, I could date all events as and when I received notification of them; if this numbering system results in a uniquely and consistently labeled set of events there is nothing to stop anyone doing it; in fact using some coordinate systems we find that an everyday object like a car can have an infinite velocity, or even go backwards in time!

This looks to me as though it’s really starting to shape up into something interesting! I am very much looking forward to Jason’s blog post on the subject. When a somewhat pathological coordinate system is allied to the YEC 6000 year time constraint it promises to result in the painting of a bizarre picture of reality; a bizarre picture of reality is to be expected when one is required to bend over backwards to support preconcieved notions that cannot come  under critical scrutiny without threat of divine displeasure.

For more on Jason Lisle's fundamentalist style of thinking, a style which seeks to secure charges of blasphemy against other Christians, see here:
http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/once-again-false-dichotomy-zone-god-did.html
http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/another-exploration-of-fundamentalist.html

Footnote
* A literal geocentric skew in the speed of light is physically distinguishable from a mere coordinate transformation. I will deal with this at a later date; but let's see what Jason has to say for himself first.

Social Health Warning (25 Aug)

I would warn people who are attracted to religion against getting involved with fundamentalists. The ethos in fundamentalist communities permits quite extreme moral duress being applied: Fundamentalists have no compunction about applying this duress because they see themselves as God’s express instruments and mouth pieces; outsiders are at best regarded as having compromised morals and at worst part of the Satanic conspiracy against them. In fact as a freelance cult/sect researcher I have myself been on the receiving end of accusations of heinous sin and even when they are not making explicit accusations fundamentalist's thoughts about you are written on their sullen faces. People with a religious inclination are especially vulnerable to this kind of social pressure. As an example of the sort of thing I am referring to have a look toward the end of the comment thread here where an attempt is made to impugn my character; this is not because they want to cause me mischief, but because they see me as part of a compromised and persecuting spiritual Babylon and therefore a legitimate target of censure. See also in the same thread my reference to the treatment of gays. The general sense of marginalisation and even persecution makes fundamentalists sensitive to criticism and susceptible to conspiracy theories. (See here: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/conspiracy-theorists-corner.html)

As a further illustration it is worth looking at the content of this article found on the YEC web site Creation Ministries. It concerns a certain “John MacKay", one time business partner of Answers in Genesis’s Ken Ham. After reading this content I felt that MacKay (pictured below) is not a man I would want to meet in a dark alley. [As a precaution I have stored the material of this link in case its content should be lost] . To be fair I must add that it is unlikely Jason Lisle would have anything to do with Mackay - or at least I hope he doesn't; Lisle at least seems normal in the sense that he doesn't have MacKay's spiritual ego issues.
See: http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/jeepers-creepers-ii-john-mackay-affair.html

Thorny character John Mackay makes a point

Evolution and Computation

I

I was alerted to the video above by its appearance on atheist Larry Moran’s blog. It is part of an interview with John C Sandford, a plant geneticist, who is billed on his Wiki page as a onetime atheist, but who is now an intelligent design creationist. In the interview the following points are mooted: 

 1. There is a process of gene death going on involving a bit by bit corruption of the genetic code – Sandford calls this the “trade secret” of genetics. Organisms are going “down” and not “up” he says. 

2. These myriad small genetic mutations are too small in benefit for selection to get hold of. 

3. If we project this degeneration back in time it implies that the human race is younger than we thought. (In fact on his Wiki page Sandford is quoted as jumping to the unwarranted conclusion that the Earth, (that is, not just this or that organism) is less than 200,000 years old! - ed)

4. Eugenics as a philosophy is just under the surface as a possible remedy to genetic entropy; the evolutionary community is thinking about eugenics but doesn’t want to talk about it. However, increasing selection pressure doesn’t stop the degeneration. (There's a good hook for conspiracy theory here! - ed)

5. The genetic degeneration in our bodies means there is no prospect of extending life. 

6. “Genetic entropy” (that is, the decay of all genes in the body due to many small random mutations) is a fact no scientist can deny. Hence aging and death. Some of these mutations transmit to offspring and hence the whole race goes downhill. 

7. We are a perishing people living in dying world. This is the downward spiral as described in scripture from which only Christ can save us. 

I have doubts about conventional evolution as the engine that has driven natural history as it is observed in the fossil record. But I would nevertheless want to distance myself from people like Sandford. 

There are at least two distinct ways life could have formed. 

a) Living configuration have a realistic probability of forming in the life time of our universe given the providences of our physical regime (bearing in mind that it is very unlikely we have fully grasped all the provisions of the cosmic physical regime (PR) and its implications). This is the so called self organisation scenario, which in less generalized form is the requirement of evolution as traditionally conceived. 

b) The history of life is a product of the technological model of development. That is, some level of intelligence is posited allowing jumps to be made between biological innovations. This will lead to a history of change with development gaps between organisms. These gaps represent leaps between “islands of configurational self-sustainability”. These islands are separated by a considerable measure of computational complexity. Therefore they are traversed by computations done in background; that is, the computations necessary to traverse these islands are not reified on any medium we are familiar with and leave no trace in the fossil record; what we might refer to as a "computational complexity hiatus".

Amongst the homunculus ID community (b) is likely to be preferred. I’m not sure that I can respect the reason for this preference because I think it arises out of the 'God did it' vs. 'evolution did it' paradigm. It is ironic that option (b) is in fact a form of evolution that requires a level of reducible complexity - we have to assume that the islands of functionality are close enough for “island hoping” to take place given the quantum of intelligence available; this is true of human technological development. I have been actively considering (b) as an option since the 1990s. This is all part of a general theory of mine that intelligence is a generalized form of “evolution” involving searching, rejecting and selecting on some medium of computation.

But let me run with option (a) for bit: If the content of a PR can be embodied in a relatively small set of mathematical functions (such as the laws of physics) then we can frame the following question: What is the fraction of life favoring PRs to the total number of PRs? I suspect (although I certainly have no proof!) that this fraction is very small. If so, then assuming the principle of equal a-priori probabilities it follows that life has very high information content. 

But the information content of life has the potential of being higher still if (b) is true. Using the Church-Turing thesis it follows that if a PR can be expressed as set of mathematical functions then it can be reduced to algorithms. These algorithms can in turn be expressed, perhaps, as a few thousand bits of information. But if long  "living" configurations are to be generated in some form of “background processing” by an intelligence, such configurations may not be reachable in algorithmically realistic times: If we are limiting the algorithmic expression of a PR to a few thousand bits then it follows that there simply aren’t enough PRs to map to all the complex configurations that are much longer than a few thousand bits. In short, the computational complexity of at least some living forms could exceed what is possible algorithmically in a realistic time. 

The rules of chess considerably constrain the possible chess games, but not to the extent that moving the chess pieces around at random within those rules will produce a coherent game; the set of coherent games is only a small subset of the number of games that the bare rules of chess allow and therefore a coherent game is a highly improbable outcome given these rules alone. Likewise, our particular PR may not be enough to sufficiently enhance the probability of life forming by self-organisation in realistic cosmic times. In  fact  Sandford, who is effectively seeing the practical outcome of our particular PR at the molecular and genetic level, simply can’t see and can’t envisage how self-organization could happen; someone of Sandford’s experience is worth taking note of on this score. 

However, if Sandford is right he is right, I suspect, for some wrong reasons. Amongst the homunculus ID community evolution is being rejected within the context of a 'God did it' or 'evolution did it' dichotomy. It is perhaps no surprise that Sandford was once an atheist occupying the opposite polarity and who presumably believed "evolution did it!".

If our cosmic PR has been selected to favour self-organization then this self-organization takes place for the very reason that Sandford wrongly thinks of as a downward spiral: Random thermodynamic agitations are the very engine of progress; increases in thermodynamic entropy entails a filling out of the maximum available states within the constraints of the PR. This random seeking process is necessary if the cosmos is to find the quasi stable configurations of life and expand into them as does a gas into a volume. Thus, the formation of life is seen to be a result of a kind of morphological disequilibrium. Thermodynamics, then, is computation at work. As I have remarked before some people in the homunculus ID movement have a poor understanding of the second law of thermodynamics and Sandford shows it. However, I must qualify myself here. Thermodynamics may be computation at work, but if our PR is not sufficiently constrained that computation is then easily overwhelmed by the size of the search space. For this reason consideration must be given to those who challenge evolution; but I’ve never needed people like Sandford and others in the homunculus ID community to tell me this.

The American Paradox.

I wouldn't want to claim that I have a one hundred percent mutual understanding with someone like Richard Dawkins, but nevertheless he seems to have captured well the paradox of America in the following quote:

As the saying goes "You don't make anything if you don't make mistakes". In America mega successes go together with some mega mistakes!

Some relevant links to previous posts:

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/crypto-deism.html
http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/conspiracy-theorists-corner.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/good-news-from-ken-ham.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/witchs-brew-from-townhallcom.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/conspiracy-and-apocalypse.html

Conspiracy and Apocalypse

I received the emailed article I have published below from the right wing magazine Townhall. I have published it here as part of my reflections on conspiracy theory. The article has all the touch and feel of the conspiracy theorist's mentality in the making. In this article Obama is portrayed in almost superhuman terms: His faults are not seen simply as the outcome of his fair share of very human foibles, failings and incompetence, but instead he is almost glorified as an anti-hero figure, an evil scheming malign intelligence bent on domination.

Human beings have an innate propensity for entertaining thoughts of apocalypse and conspiracy. These two themes frequently form a very toxic union. An example is the late “prognosticator” (=prophet?) Barry Smith who combined New World Order conspiracy theory with an apocalyptic vision of social collapse caused by the millennium bug. The prophets of conspiracy and apocalypse readily connect with insecurity about where society is headed; these prophets focus a sense of malaise by giving it clear cut narratives on which to hang fears. Fear has a catalytic effect on the imagination and florid paranoiac visions of society emerge into consciousness like the spectres of a delirium. Amongst the disillusioned and disaffected tales of conspiracy find fertile ground to grow and elaborate into irrefutable grand rationales. But the conspiracy theorist has one great consolation in his dystopian paradigm; he can warm himself with a sense of pride that he is part of a remnant who have unlocked the secret behind society. He may think of himself as oppressed but at least he can comfort himself with the thought that the oppressor has not fooled him and that he has exposed the immorality of the oppressor.

There are, however inconsistencies amongst conspiracy theorists. For example, Barry Smith fans would find themselves at loggerheads with many American conspiracy theorists who identify with right wing politics. (Also, see this post of mine). One quickly finds that the imagination of each conspiracy theorist has constructed their own very peculiar ogre. Conspiracy theorists never learn from one another, just as religious cults and sects never learn from one another.

I believe in cover ups myself, but not the kind of cover up of highly organised malign conspiracies. In peace time human beings are remarkably incompetent when it comes to organizing themselves into very coordinated secret societies. All the cover ups in our kind of society can be explained as attempts to hide incompetence, ignorance, failure, mismanagement and above all moral sleaze. That's about as far as conspiracies get.

A short post on the  fundamentalist's taste for conspiracy theory can be found here: 

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/conspiracy-theorists-corner.html
Some other interesting and relevant links:

http://www.ecalpemos.org/2011/02/similarity-of-christian-fundamentalists.html

http://whyidontbelieve.blogspot.co.uk/2007/04/barry-smiths-books.html

***

Presenting Townhall magazine's vision of the anti-Christ anti-Hero:

No Higher Power: Obama's War on Religion

The Obama administration's overreaching and pervasive secularist policies represent the greatest government-directed assault on religious freedom in American history. So argues conservative leader Phyllis Schlafly and journalist George Neumayr. In No Higher Power, Schlafly and Neumayr show how Obama is waging war on our religious liberties and actively working to create one nation under him rather than one nation under God.

Get Phyllis Schafly's new book: No Higher Power for Free!

''Obama views traditional religion as a temporary opiate for the poor, confused, and jobless -- a drug that will dissipate as the federal government assumes more God-like powers, and his new secularist beliefs and policies gain adherents,'' write Schlafly and Neumayr.

From cutting funding for religious schools to Obama's deliberate omission of God and religion in public speeches to his assault on the Catholic Church, No Higher Power is a shocking and comprehensive look at howObama is violating one of our most fundamental rights -- and remaking our country into a nation our Founding Fathers would hardly recognize.

Get Phyllis Schafly's new book: No Higher Power for Free today!

For four years Barack Obama has waged an unparalleled attack—largely undocumented by the mainstream media—on religious liberty in the United States. Never before has an administration been more convinced that there is no higher power than itself: one nation under Obama. In this stunning new book, veteran conservative lawyer, activist, and commentator Phyllis Schlafly and reporter George Neumayr reveal the greatest assault on American liberty in our time—the Obama administration's war on religious freedom.

In No Higher Power you'll learn:

• Why a second Obama term could spell the end of Catholic hospitals and the court-martialing of Christian military chaplains
• How the Obama administration is stripping conscience protections for pro-life doctors and nurses—forcing them to either assist in abortions or quit medicine
• How the Obama administration sought to ban Bibles from military hospitals and prohibit invocations of Jesus Christ at military funerals
• Why even Justice Elena Kagan—an Obama appointee to the Supreme Court—was shocked by the Obama administration's dictating employment policy at a Lutheran church
• How Obama is defying federal law in the Defense of Marriage Act
• How liberal Christians like Jim Wallis have acted as useful idiots for Obama's war on Christianity—and how the Catholic Left in Chicago actually helped pay for Obama's training as a disciple of the radical Saul Alinsky
• Why the Obama administration coddles Islam while actively discriminating against Christians and Jews

In No Higher Power, Schlafly and Neumayr expose the Obama administration's brazen disregard for the First Amendment, its relentless purging of religion from our public life, and the even more chilling persecution of religion set to come.

Don't miss this powerful new book! Order Townhall Magazine today and get Phyllis Schafly's new book: No Higher Power: Obama's War on Religious Freedom for FREE!

Planet Narnia Part 3: Consciousness

I have been doing a series of blogs on Michael Ward’s fascinating book Planet Narnia. My first two posts can be found here and here. In this post I want to pick up on another secondary theme found in Ward’s book; namely, the peculiar logical status of conscious cognition. 

 That we have a name for consciousness can in itself be the cause of logical typing errors. For example, we might say something like: “In this world we have objects like matter, space, plants, animals, human beings and consciousness!”. It might appear from the construction of this list that consciousness is just another category, like materials and animals, that we can subject to observation. However, in this list consciousness is the odd one out; we don’t observe consciousness, rather it is observation; in all observations conscious cognition is implicit and therefore it is also implicit in all scientific testing. 

Somebody who has made the category error of thinking about consciousness as if it is just another object subject to observation is Larry Moran. In this post he says: 

Now, I happen believe that there's no such thing as "consciousness" in the sense of something tangible that we can point to and say. "That's consciousness."

I would accept the face value of that statement: Take me to a brain and all I am aware of is the third person perspective of neural activity. Moreover, we’re told that a large part of brain activity is unconscious so even if I‘m looking at brain activity I’m not necessarily looking at activity that maps to “consciousness”. But this is really beside the point; the point is that this neural activity is how the first person's conscious experience registers in the consciousness of the third person observer. Therefore conscious cognition is the implicit backdrop and stage of any narrative spoken from a third person perspective. However, this exercise in self-awareness seems too reflexive for Larry and because he fails to observe anything that looks like “consciousness” in brain activity he simply defines consciousness as identical to neural activity: 

“I think it’s merely a descriptive term for brain activity. Consciousness may be an important and useful word for describing the phenomenon, but that’s all it is” 

Larry seems unable to detect the presence of consciousness cognition implicit in the phrase “describing the phenomenon”; there has to be a first person perspective for whom the whole thing is a phenomenon observed and described. It’s almost as if people like Larry lack a degree of self-awareness: They can see the third person story, but have no category for the first person story, Given that third person descriptions conventionally contain no explicit reference to an observer it is no surprise that Larry thinks consciousness doesn’t exist. But thinking that consciousness doesn’t exist is a bit like thinking that “observation” doesn’t exist. What then is the final arbiter of scientific theories in the face of this attack on the reality of observation? As Ward correctly says: 

To Lewis (as to Barfield), scientists in the modern period were too often naturalistic in their world view, apt to commit the error of removing their own minds and their thinking processes from the total picture of the world that they were trying to understand and inhabit. P242 

It was the very foundational nature of observation (or experience/consciousness) in science that lead me, at a very early stage in my philosophical musings, to be drawn toward positivistic schools of thought. I was drawn toward them because they acknowledged the scientific centrality of the conscious observing thinking agent; in fact, that highly complex agent was effectively axiomatic to positivism. This led me to a favourable view of idealism as a philosophy. According to Ward it seems that a similar shift toward idealism happened to Lewis himself: 

…they maintained that abstract thought, if obedient to logical rules, gave indisputable ‘truth’ and the possibility of ‘valid’ moral judgment. Barfield, who had advanced beyond realism some time before his friend, taught Lewis that, if thought were purely a subjective event, these claims for abstract thinking would have to be abandoned. Lewis was not willing-indeed, not able – to abandon them……He now saw that a realist philosophy that admitted only sensory perception would be effectively solipsistic, but if solipsism were true it could not know itself to be true. The cerebral physiologist who says that thought is ‘only’ tiny physical movements of grey matter must be wrong, for how could he think that thought truly except by participating in the medium which the logic of his statement denies? “The inside vision of rational thinking must be truer than the outside vision which only sees movements of the grey matter; for if the outside vision were the correct one all thought (including this thought itself) would be valueless, and this is self contradictory” P34

 I would want to comment on this quote as follows: The cerebral physiologist who says that thought is ‘only’ tiny physical movements of grey matter is in one sense right because his third person perspective on the first person will mean that observations of the latter will only ever reveal tiny physical movements of grey matter. But if we are a cerebral physiologist we must not neglect to carry out the reflexive operation of looking back down the line of our observation to ourselves where it becomes apparent that implicit in our third person account of the brain are the observations and theorizings of a first person perspective. It may well be that every conscious event maps on a point by point basis to some kind of neural activity, but this still leaves us with the observer-observed dichotomy between the first person and third person perspectives. 

Ward tells us that given this kind of philosophical background Lewis became an idealist: 

Lewis had wanted Nature to be quite independent of his observations, something other, indifferent, self-existing. “But now, it seemed to me, I had to give that up. Unless I were to accept an unbelievable alternative, I must admit that mind was no late-come epiphenomenon; that the whole universe was, in the last resort, mental; that our logic was participation in a cosmic Logos” (Logos as a pervasive spirit of rationality…) Lewis was moving toward an idealist philosophy. To be more precise, he was recognizing that his present position already entailed idealism. P34

There is, however, a major and obvious issue with a thorough going idealism that asserts that ultimate reality is only vested in the observations, perceptions and thoughts of conscious cognition. This is the old question about the reality of events which seem to be well beyond the spot light of conscious observation. We have a compelling intuition that our world is benevolently rational and therefore that the signals arriving at our door, whether they be the fossil remains from deep time or the starlight from deep space, are not just a deceptive sensory façade, but instead an interface to something real and beyond. There may be no entities that qualify as conscious observers in deep space or deep time and yet the compelling rational integrity of the cosmic order demands these signals be treated as a clue to a detailed reality beyond close observation. Lewis, in all likelihood, understood this completely and may be it is this that drew him toward Berkelyan idealism, a form of idealism where humanly unperceived cosmic quarters nevertheless have a place in the conscious cognition of God:

However, it was only a small step to theism. Indeed, Lewis admits in ‘Surprised by Joy’ that he cannot now understand how he ever regarded his idealism as ‘something quite distinct from Theism’. Rather ‘idealism turned out, when you took it seriously, to be disguised Theism’. He considered Berkeley’s account of idealism ‘unanswerable’ and when asked what school of philosophy God might support, he replied, ‘God is a Berkeleyan idealist’. P35 

I personally have no a priori problem with the notion that the motions of neural atoms, motions which constitute the third person perspective of my brain, have a point by point mapping to my every conscious thought and in that sense “explains” them. But why should this system of atoms should be graced with an epistemology that seems to work? That is, why can an ensemble of atoms successfully reach knowledge about themselves? There seems to be nothing in science which obliges guaranteed “self-knowledge”. In this connection Ward quotes Haldane: 

The naturalistic alternative refutes itself, in Lewis view, for the reason given by Haldane: ‘If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true… and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms’ P217

We could short cut the self-defeating self-reference here by simply accepting benevolent rationality as an axiomatic brute given and probe no further. But for theists benevolent rationality is a rational assumption in the context of a theology of providence. (See How to know you know you know it ) 

I’m not sure, however, that I would want to follow Lewis into the next stage of his thought, a stage which to me smacks of dualism and ghost in the machine. Following on from my last quote Ward says: 

Since this position is self-refuting, Lewis concludes that it cannot be true; human thinking must be sharing in a ‘supernatural reason’. By ‘supernatural’ Lewis means that human thought, when true, is not simply dependent upon the interlocked system of natural causes and natural effects. Rational knowledge is not caused by effects; rather it is the consequence of grounds, being determined only by the truth it knows, not by digestion or heredity or the weather or any other non-rational, naturalistic causation. P217 

For me this kind of thinking disrupts the agreement and harmony between conscious cognition and the “interlocked system of natural causes and natural effects”. Although I’m not dogmatic about it, I have no problem with the notion that there may be a complete point by point conformity between one’s first person experiences and the “system of natural causes and effects” as observed by the third person. On that basis I have no a-priori objection to the idea that “Rational knowledge is caused by effects”; in fact my understanding of theism is sympathetic to this idea: God is as much creative sovereign over the third person perspective of atoms and particles as he is over the first person experiences that map to the system of particulate motions. Therefore the system of causes and effects that we observe could well be efficacious enough to provide conscious cognition with “self-explanation” (See the forward of my book here where I moot this idea). But it is when we posit no providential underwriter of this system of self-explanation that the self-defeating self-referencing problems arise. 

At one point Ward quotes Barfield who in my opinion expresses well the situation we find ourselves in: 

Science deals with the world which it perceives but, seeking more and more to penetrate the veil of naive perception, progresses only toward the goal of nothing, because it still does not accept in practice (what-ever it may admit theoretically) that the mind first creates what it perceives as objects, including the instruments which science uses for that very penetration. It insists on dealing with ‘data’, but there shall no data be given, save the bare precept. The rest is imagination. Only by imagination therefore can the world be known. And what is needed is, not only that larger and larger telescopes should be constructed, but that the human mind should become increasingly aware of its own creative activity. P241-242 (Barfield) 

We cannot peep round the interface of our perceptions or dispense with the imagination which interprets what it sees and builds the superstructure of a rational world on those perceptions. Whether we believe in a providential theism or not, science can only proceed if we are positive about the assumption of a rational world amenable to the imagination. Without this assumption being the foundation of our thought we have little epistemological purchase on the cosmos. Without this assumption being proactively exploited all science and knowledge ends.

 Notes: 

William Erwin Thompson, of whom I have done two posts (see here and here) and whose ideas I feel are linked to Planet Narnia, is another author who understands the status of consciousness. See the second of the two posts I have linked to where I quote from Pages 98 and 99 of Thompson’s book Passages about Earth.

I have written on the subject of consciousness several times in this blog as follows:


http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/self-referencing-nature-of.html
http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/nounema-elementa-cognita-and.html
http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/how-to-know-you-know-you-know-it.html
http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-is-consciousness.html
http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/free-will-and-determinism.html

An Identified Lying Object?

Tim Ventura has a close encounter with Bob Lazar

 As a bit of light relief I have been ferreting around on the internet for stories about the self-proclaimed Area 51 “UFO reverse engineer”, Bob Lazar. I came across this PDF article on American Anti-gravity written by Tim Ventura. It tells of Ventura’s contacts with Lazar. 

Tim Ventura of American Anti-gravity knows how to tell a good story; that’s not to imply that he is untruthful, but he has an aptitude for making humdrum experiences colorful and intriguing. (I have written about Tim and American Anti-Gravity before - see here and here). Ventura’s story on Lazar is no exception and for UFOlogists who want an insight into Bob Lazar's psyche it’s recommended reading.

Tim Ventura strikes me as a good natured, honest and trusting person who is more likely to think the best of people rather than the worst. Reading between the lines of Ventura's story it appears that these traits were exploited by Lazar in order to take Ventura for a ride. Ventura’s willingness to give Lazar the benefit of the doubt contrasts with UFOlogist and Physicist Stanton Friedman who thinks Lazar’s Area 51 story is bunk and refers to it as The Bob Lazar Fraud.

Ventura tells how, in a series of phone contacts with Lazar, he was offered employment on a top secret black project sponsored by the military. This project was, according to Lazar, developing new propulsion systems based on Ventura’s area of expertise – namely, high voltage lifters. Needless to say none of Lazar’s promises came to anything. At the time it seems that Ventura could have used a well-paid job, but the story Lazar was feeding Ventura eventually fizzled out inconclusively and Ventura’s hopes of a high status research job were dashed.

Tim Ventura's Garage Based Lifter Technology

The whole episode left Ventura with questions. But calling Lazar a plain liar seemed too simplistic and Ventura could not quite shake the feeling that maybe there was more to Lazar than just a clever yarn spinner. In fact it is very difficult to make rational sense of Lazar’s behaviour. As Ventura says: 

Why would Lazar orchestrate such an elaborate lie involving Lifters in 2003, and then ask me to keep the entire thing quiet? 

If Lazar is lying this leaves us with outstanding questions about just what motivates him to concoct and lead people on with florid tales. What is he after? Liars must be prepared to take risks, but is Lazar really so stupid as to think he can fool all of the people all of the time? Perhaps he is some kind of sociopath who gets kicks out of the sense of control that his attempts to manipulate people bring him. Or perhaps he basks in the temporary feel-good factor and social kudos of tall tales about working with high ranking military officials and scientists on secret projects. Or may be Lazar lives in a fantasy world and believes the stories he tells. 

Bob Lazar appears to know a thing or two.....

.....or at least that's what Tim Ventura thought.

What baited Ventura in the first instance was an unsolicited call from Lazar asking if Ventura might be interested in a joining a top secret project. This unprompted and proactive act by Lazar left Ventura unable to quite write off Lazar as a plain liar:

Why would he spontaneously call me on the spur of the moment to fabricate a lie about a breakthrough in Lifter technology? It made no sense whatsoever, and consequently I believed his story......It’s easy to say that  I was being naïve, but it wasn’t just a single  statement that made him believable – it was  the tone & context, and a complete lack of rationale behind any fakery. 

At one point in his narative Ventura suggests that may be Lazar is some kind of government disinformation agent; if we have a taste for conspiracy and intrigue then perhaps we might further speculate that Lazar was there to help put American Anti-gravity off course! 

But whatever; it is easy to see how poor Tim Ventura was ripe for manipulation by Lazar. We all have hopes, aspirations, and goals and our vanities are ever open to the flattering deceiving tongue. It looks to me as though Lazar was a past master at tapping into people’s emotional complexes and so he did with Ventura. Ventura admits that the thought of joining a well-funded team at the cutting edge of new propulsion technology excited him: 

Believe it or not, after that second phone-call I actually felt relieved, when I think that most people would have been more on-edge than ever. Part of it was at least the knowledge about this “breakthrough” – an increase that magnitude in Lifters would have made them a practical aerospace technology, and would have put me in a founding role of what could very well be the next step in the evolution of aircraft technology....... At the time, I really believed him. In hindsight I’m not sure if I should have, but in the moment I felt like I might have a job  waiting right around the corner, and that my  future might get a little bit brighter from his efforts in Washington DC

We can’t blame Ventura for this kind of ambition; it's only natural. Also, to be fair Ventura's a bright spark and eventually he smelt a rat, although he seems too good natured to come right out and accuse Lazar of being a fraud. It is difficult to believe that Lazar could be so cold hearted as to take a nice guy like Ventura and string him along for so long. 

*** 

 In many ways Lazar is an excellent metaphor for of the whole UFO/abduction phenomenon. Lazar offers us just enough intriguing evidence to get people to come running, but in the final analysis not enough to complete the story and bring closure. Ventura was left dangling on the line and wondering what it was all about; he had been given sufficient clues to hint that behind Lazar there might be something real, and yet not enough to prove anything. Lazar was a disembodied voice on the phone and Ventura was never in a position where he could get up close to check things out at will; he was fed enticing tidbits of information that took him on to the next stage. Not unlike the UFO phenomenon itself Lazar builds his stories around people’s emotional complexes; their hopes, desires, fears, suspicions, guilt, vanities, heartaches and above all their myths. And yet Lazar’s own motives remain utterly inscrutable. Ultimately no in depth reality emerged from Lazar’s claims; they remain to this day as just pure façade. Lazar was there, it seems, to disconnect Ventura from reality and tip him into a world of fancy and make believe. All this is very isomorphic with the world of UFOs (and the world of apparitions and cryptozoology). In one sense our perceptions are our reality and sometimes those perceptions morph into something dreamlike, something lacking in rational depth and coherence but real enough to be enticing.

***

The above really classifies as part of my paranormal series. The other parts can be seen here:

http://noumenacognitaanddreams.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/paranormal-part-3-westall-66-and.html

http://noumenacognitaanddreams.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/paranormal-part-2-warning-dont-watch.html

http://noumenacognitaanddreams.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/paranormal-part-i-noumena-cognita-or.html

The Grand Logical Hiatus

(Picture from http://www.faradayschools.com/re-topics/re-year-10-11/god-of-the-gaps/ )

 I was very interested in this post on Uncommon Descent. It quotes the response of William Dembski to the question Is information a primitive concept on a par with matter and energy? Part of Dembski’s reply is: 

I would agree that information is fundamental entity and am happy to put myself in this company. Perhaps it’s easier to take this view nowadays than in previous generations. We are awash with information. This is an information age. Moreover, we all know about information going through multiple transformations and embodiments. 

When you send an email, your fingers type at a keyboard, producing ASCII text. This is then transformed into some other symbol string so that it can be moved across the Internet without error (using error-correcting codes). Then, that information needs to be reconstituted at the other end. 

The same sorts of processes are going on in life. Information is transmitted from DNA to RNA to amino-acid sequences. It’s not just that we see alphanumeric-type items arranged sequentially in biology, but that we see transformation from one such sequence to another. Although it no longer surprises us, it should surprise us that there is such a thing as a genetic CODE. 

 Think about it—to code something is to take a character string in one form and transform it into another character string, where it can be useful in a way it wasn’t before the transformation. Alan Turing, Claude Shannon (left), and others were dealing with and developing the mathematics for such codes in the 1940s, and then, lo, in the 1950s we find that such codes are in all our cells. This is remarkable. 

 Firstly, some preamble: I think of Dembski as a moderate and reasonable evangelical Christian whose ideas need some dispassionate consideration; there is a core idea in his message that deserves some space. However, it is unfortunate that this idea is lost in the impassioned and enraged melee that the origins question has become. Worse, Dembski himself is a much admired figure head for a group of disaffected anti-academic-establishment buffs who are in the main vociferously against the story of evolution as is it is told by academia. It’s not that I am myself closed to scepticism about evolution (I follow UD because many of its posts contain worthy material), but the deep emotions and vested interests on both sides of the argument have made calm and studied detachment of the subject all but impossible.

Just what is at the bottom of this polarization and passion? I suppose that’s easily answered in one word: God. Dembski has come to represent a particular brand of intelligent design that I refer to as homunculus intelligent design. This view of ID posits an intelligent designer as a causal agent that is to be distinguished over and against natural causes: The subtext is that this designer interrupts the normal flow of causality in order to impose on matter patterns that are thought to be otherwise very unlikely to arise. It is therefore no surprise that to the angry militant atheists the appellation “intelligent design” is a technical sounding abstraction that puts a thin scientific gloss on the magical interventions of God 

Underlying this high adrenaline row is a conceptual fault line based on a folk philosophy which sees a sharp distinction between “divine causes” and “natural causes”. In this paradigm God is another causal agent to be contrasted over and against the “natural” causal agents of the physical world. Given this conceptual dichotomy it is understandable enough that the respective antagonists will want to maximise the role of either physical causes or the role of God as an alternative causal agent. For the atheists evolution is a must because it apparently fills an explanatory gap, thus helping to squeeze out God. In contrast the homunculus ID community are anxious to make the most of God’s intelligence’s role and thus are engaged in a vociferous anti-evolution campaign in order to reinstate the gap and offer God intelligence as the alternative explanation. For both sides it’s an XOR: Either “God Intelligence did it” or “natural causes did it” – the two categories are treated as if they are exclusive. In this context it is no surprise that to many an atheist, science and theology are seen to be naturally in conflict. Both sides of this conflict hold this dichotomized paradigm of “the supernatural vs. the natural” in their heads and therefore both are well set up for the hostilities we see. 

But whatever the shortcomings of the “God vs. Nature” paradigm and the demerits of the homunculus intelligent design community’s philosophy, there is, I believe, at an abstract level, a startling core truth at the heart of Dembski’s thesis. This becomes clear even if we accept the general features of the established evolutionary picture. What follows is my own rendering of this thesis. 

 *** 

If the general evolutionary picture is to work then it requires that the conditional probability of life must, given the age, size and physical laws of the cosmos, be realistic. That is: 

 Prob(Evolution of life|Physical regime) ~ realistic 

Expression 1 

…where “Physical regime” may be sufficiently expressed in the physics we currently understand or perhaps supplemented with some more physics we have yet to understand; the point here is that the general idea of an evolutionary understanding of life makes the assumption that the physical regime, whatever it may be, is sufficiently resourced to have a realistic probability of generating life via so called ”self organization”  

The protagonists in our God vs. Naturalism row both hold the same philosophy (subliminally) that naturalism is a causal category which, naturally (so to speak), is in contradistinction to the divine causal category. Therefore both sides will be very interested in whether or not the value of the above probability is realistic; for this value will be highly pertinent to their decision on whether “God did it” or “Natural causes did it”.  

But it is hardly a profound observation to remark that the above expression is a conditional probability and as such leaves us with deep questions about the origin of the physical regime; who or what “did that”? In fact the above expression, even if the probability it returns is realistic, simply defers the question of origins to the mystery of the life generating efficacy of our physical regime; this question concerns not just its origin but  also the present tense continuous maintenance of this regime.

To the end of seeking to arrive at an absolute probability for life we could attempt to pose this question: 

Prob(physical regime) = ? 

 Expression 2 

As it stands this quantity is ill-defined; our physical regime is not known to be nested within a higher level physical regime with the potential of generating it with some probability. So, how can we load the above expression with coherent meaning? The obvious and popular approach is, of course, the multiverse; here we envisage a higher level physical regime with the potential of stochastically generating universes with different physical characteristics. Thus, our question is now a little better defined: 

Prob(physical regime 0 | physical regime 1) = ? 

Expression 3

….where our own physical regime is assigned the number “0” and where the higher regime in which it is nested is assigned the number “1”. This numbering scheme immediately suggest a turtles all the way down regress whereby we imagine a succession of nested physical contexts of higher and higher level. However, we could bundle this whole regress into level 1 thus embodying all the mysteries of origins (and maintenance) into this single super system. (Although if pushed this labelling procedure may give rise to a kind of Godel diagionalisation paradox, an issue which I will neglect here) 

One of the perceived advantages of this multiverse nesting trick is that speculation allows us to make the multiverse so immense that even with a uniform distribution of probabilities each and every configuration is likely to make an appearance somewhere in the huge ensemble of universes. The lack of an uneven weighting in the distribution of probability means that no special class of configurations (such as the configurations of life) are conferred with a favourable probability. Any posited bias in the probability distribution in favour of life is likely to be very unpopular amongst atheists: it would be like handing an ace card to theists! 

But even if we accept the existence of an indifferent multiverse that confers no favorable probabilities this still leaves us with at least two enigmas: 

a) The multiverse itself must be the subject of some given and particular mathematical system (Max Tegmark’s’ mathematical universe tries to get round this by positing the reification of every possible mathematical system) 

b) It seems most odd that we find ourselves in a universe whose order persists: in most mathematically possible scenarios any chance order soon decays into disorder. 

Another approach to the meaning of expression 2 above is as follows: We assume that any physical regime can be expressed as a collection of mathematical functions. We then use the Church-Turing thesis to conjecture that it is possible to express these functions as an algorithm. A relatively well defined question can then be proposed if not easily answered: Any algorithm can, presumably, be reduced to a binary pattern of 1 and 0s. Thus, one can then define the space of all possible algorithms as a space of possible binary patterns. What fraction of this set of possible algorithms will have a realistic probability of generating life in a reasonable time?* Because the configurations of life constitute a very small fraction of all possible configurations I suspect that correspondingly a very small fraction of the possible algorithms will generate life in a realistic time. (Unfortunately a proof of this conjecture is certainly not at my figure tips!) We now assume the philosophy of equal a-priori probabilities applies to the class of possible algorithms; that is, in the absence of any reason to think otherwise each possible case is assigned an equal probability. Therefore, because the class of physical regimes favoring the generation of living structures in a realistic time is likely to be an extremely small fraction in the space of all possible algorithms, then it follows that living structures have a very low absolute probability. There is, admittedly, a fair amount of (reasonable) conjecture in this argument; but it does suggest that our physical regime is a very particular one. 

 *** 

The take-home-lesson from the foregoing is that given the configurations of life it is very difficult to avoid some kind of mathematical cost for these configurations: If these configurations are to be regarded as having no specially conferred probability we are forced to extend the size of the multiverse to phenomenal dimensions; but even then we are left with enigmatic questions about the giveness of the multiverse and the apparent stability of our own small corner of it. Alternatively, if we are only able to accept the existence of the universe we observe we are then faced with the extreme absolute improbability of the physical regime needed to generate living structures. We are therefore caught between two huge costs; that is, either the immense ontology of a multiverse or the immense improbability of very particular conditions. Which cost suites our theology (or anti-theology) best? When Dembski affirms that information is a primitive he is likely to have in mind the latter case: That is, if we are to reject speculative ideas about a multiverse then high improbability has to be accepted as a cosmic given. High probability equates to high levels of information and therefore information must be taken as an axiomatic given as is also, for all practical purposes, mass-energy. 

As we have seen, and in fact as Dembski himself would likely tell us, life is the product of very peculiar and special conditions; that is, it is necessarily the product of a given or "primitive" improbability. This improbability is something that is all but logically impossible to expunge from our physical models. All our physical theories are ways of describing these axiomatic improbable conditions: The laws of science are a technique of succinctly embodying information about those conditions. This information is axiomatic in the sense that it will never  attain the level of logical necessity; a grand logical hiatus will always be found in our science, a hiatus that will always surprise us and leave us in wonderment. As Dembski implies in the quote above; we may express the content of this logical hiatus in different ways and it may transform itself into different informational forms, but it never really goes away. Mystery and wonderment are not something that science is in the business of removing; it’s just that the object of our wonderment has changed with history and in modern times the mystery has taken on a new form. 

But although I am myself am inclined to swing behind Dembski on the information question I am far less inclined to support the homunculus intelligent design school of thought. In part this is because I believe the “Natural causes did it vs. God did it” paradigm is a false dichotomy. Those who hold on to this dichotomy are, I submit, still clinging to a notion of the mystery of origins as it has been expressed in times past.

Footnote:
* If Wolfram's "computational equivalence" conjecture is right then all algorithms that generate complex output will, if given enough time, visit every computation. Hence with an eye on Wolfram I have added the qualification "realistic time".