This yellowing paper back started something for me.
This series on TheThinknet Project is really part of my Melencolia I series. The paper for part 1 of TheThinknet Project can be downloaded here. I reproduce the first paragraph of this paper below.
***
In the last of my
Melencolia I series I reached a hiatus on the nature of quantum leaps,
a hiatus that left me wondering where to go next: For if quantum leaps really
do regularly clear the wave field in favour of the coherent objects of
intensive matter, at first sight this seems to hamstring the unrestricted quantum
searching needed to find (and ultimately select) stable organic structures. So
in this latest series I return to the work that started my quantum mechanical
investigations in the first place, work which eventually led to my very
speculative proposal about gravity. The Thinknet Project was a project that
influenced how I was to start thinking about several topics, not least the
relationship between language, thinking and even reality itself. The general
idea of embarking on this latest series is that by returning to this topic it
may give me some pointers showing which way to proceed with the Melencolia I
series.
Disclaimer:The right-wing
makers of this video have been accused of willful selective editing by the
left-wing
There has been a
flurry of outraged posts on the internet about the family planning doctor (see
above) who was filmed talking about her work, macabre work involving the
distribution of the body parts of the unborn children she aborts. I find the idea of abortion carried out for
marginal reasons of choice abhorrent and oppose it. Loving parents who want to
build a family form a bond of great love for their unborn child even at an
early stage of development. For these parents the loss of that developing child
would be a great tragedy for them: So, if
an unborn child can on the one hand stimulate intense parental feelings why
should love and protection be withheld from selected unborn children for quite
marginal reasons? Are those parental
feelings to be regarded as a fixation that signifies nothing?
Conscious
cognition is unlikely to suddenly switch on during a child’s development and this means there is no clear cut demarcation to justify parental protection and
love being withheld. Therefore except in dire circumstances I find abortion unjustifiable. There is no fundamental basis why an unborn child should receive less protection than a
new born child. However, given the philosophical and social pathologies of our
society that’s not to say abortion
should be made illegal any more than divorce or prostitution should be made
illegal. Moreover, I don’t automatically equate abortion with murder as do
some, although I do see it as killing. (See below)
So having set
that scene you might think I would have a basic agreement with many right-wing Christians
on this subject. Think again. Here is how one member of the Intelligent Design
community, Cornelius Hunter, puts it (“Darwin’s
God” 15th July)
As predicted, evolutionists are desperately attempting
to dismiss and delegitimize a several-hour long video of an evolutionist
discussing the routine practice of crushing live babies to murder them in cold
blood. Business Insider, for example, leads with an absurd headline labelling
the video as “false.” No the video is not false. What is false is the
evolutionist’s claims that humanity, and everything else for that matter, arose
from a series of random chance events—what their Epicurean forefathers referred
to as swerving atoms. And, as William Jennings Bryan foresaw, if the world is
nothing but a happenstance accident, then what does it matter if we kill? And
kill they do. In our country alone evolutionists have murdered more than 50
million babies. It is Bryan’s worst nightmare come true. Evolutionists have
brought us this nightmare, and they will insist that it continues. What we are
now seeing is how evolutionists conduct business—lies, more lies, and
blackballing and delegitimization of anyone who points it out.
“Evolutionists
have murdered…. Evolutionists have brought us this nightmare”. That’s a rather emphatic connection being
made there between evolution and abortion. In order to avoid incriminating the innocent
that really needs qualifying: Are all abortionists
evolutionists? (probably, yes). Are all evolutionists abortionists? (probably,
no) Where do the above accusations place
evolutionist Christians like Francis Collins and Ken Miller? And what about
Intelligent Design Guru William Dembski who is arguably a
crypto-evolutionist? Evolutionists this, evolutionists that…..;
IDists like Hunter (along with Christian
fundamentalists) trace back many of society’s woes to evolution, from
mass murders to the holocaust, from eugenics to abortion, from out of control
gun owners to Islamic State…. did I just
say Islamic State? I think I must
have got that wrong: Islamic State are very likely to be anti-evolutionist*1
(But see footnote)
But evolution is
not as well defined as Hunter’s sweeping accusations hints. In fact evolution is
so ill-defined that it could conceivably cover intelligent design! See here for
example:
So if evolution cannot in and of itself be implicated as determining one’s stance on
abortion what is the underlying
philosophy that leads one to have no problem with it? Hunter tries to express it by saying,
…..what their Epicurean forefathers referred to
as swerving atoms. And …… if the world is nothing
but a happenstance accident, then what does it matter if we kill?
Hunter is no
doubt right in tracing heartless abortionism back to a world view, but ironically
Hunter himself conspires to help along a debased
concept of evolution. For as has been shown in this series of posts conventional evolution
cannot work in an informational vacuum – it must itself tap into the givens of an
a priori mathematical structure in
configuration space. Therefore evolution is far from a happenstance process; in fact evolution is a thermodynamic analogue
of embryo development, where in both cases up front but background information guides and
biases the random shufflings of atoms. This is not to say that I believe evolution
actually works like this. However, the intricate nuances of the evolution debate
are pushed aside in the highly charged and polarized atmosphere in which Hunter
is contending
Evolution in its
distorted debased form is very readily infected with the virus of reductionist
nihilist nothing buttery. This in turn is likely to affect the value
people place on life: In such a context nihilism and extreme postmodernism find
fertile ground. The hopelessness and purposelessness engendered by nihilism and
demented fragmented postmodernist thinking*2 can even tempt suicide
– the ultimate expression of a belief in an empty world. The grand narrative of
atoms and the void has a hidden inner
contradiction that is liable lead to a disbelief even in truth itself (See here). If antifoundational nihilism has
the potential to depress to the extent that it increases suicide risk what
chance does an unborn child have?
And yet it is
true that from the third person perspective that a close look at matter only reveals swerving atoms. In fact if we look very
closely at a human being all we see is, apparently, swerving atoms, even though those atoms follow some very sophisticated
swerves. What is lacking here is the
first person perspective of conscious cognition. Any human being, born and
unborn, is more than the third person perspective – it is also a first person
perspective: If abortionists don’t perceive the unborn child as a unique and
sacred first person and instead just as atoms
and the void then within the parameters of that perception, however wrong
that perception is, abortion will been viewed as just killing and not murder. A
necessary (but not sufficient) condition of murder is knowing that killing ends
the life of another first person perspective. To those who only see the unborn child as atoms and the void it is unlikely they
would see that child as another conscious being; in fact there are some ultras
out there who even express doubt about the existence of consciousness. Therein
lies the problem: Abortionists can’t be accused of murder if they simply don’t perceive
it as anything to do with murder; to those with such an arid view of the fetus,
abortion is just the disposal of a molecular machine and so their
conscience is clear.
Appendix: On polarisation and my wariness of
evangelico-fundamentalists
It is probable
that someone like Hunter leans toward the political right-wing. Evidence for
this comes from the kind of supporting comments he gets. The text below was
extracted from comments on his post of July 14. Notice the way moderate commenter “William Spearshake” is thought of as
a liberal-leftist devil’s advocate and the rightists do their best to push him in that direction. That the liberal-leftist abortionists are “evil”
rather than simply working out a fallacious world view is axiomatic to these
rightists. Inevitably the gun-owning issue gets thrown into the inflammatory mix.
Hunter’s fulminations are very much part of this highly charged debate. This kind of behaviour is the main reason why I avoid contact with
fundamentalists and some evangelicals: They see the world almost exclusively
through moral spectacles: This means that those who disagree with them are likely to be viewed as willfully disobedient to moral principles and an affront to a
sense of morality. All too often, then, one finds evangelico-fundamentalists accusing
detractors of moral defect. I have experienced this myself and that’s one
reason why I avoid contact with them. We
can see some of the antecedents of this type of conduct below. We can also see
an almost organic join between evangelico-fundamentalists and the gun owning
small government rightists; this I believe traces back to the American Revolution.
(See here). And for good measure I
suppose I ought to mention the rightist susceptibility to conspiracy theorism (See here). The US needs to get back to its progressive Whiggish roots.
Joe G July 15, 2015 at 7:08 AM
How do you losers justify the killing of millions of
unborn children? Why do you scream bloody murder at gun violence when the
deaths caused are less than 1% of the deaths caused by abortions?
William Spearshake July 15, 2015 at 9:56 AM
And for the first century of its existence, the NRA
was in favour of more restrictive gun control laws. The motives and focus of
organizations change over time.
Joe G July 15, 2015 at 10:48 AM
The NRA responded to the liberal attacks. In order to
keep what they had they had to pull far to the right.
William Spearshake July 15, 2015 at 11:11 AM
I wasn't criticizing the NRA, although there is much
to be critical of. I was merely pointing out that you can't judge a long
standing organization based on the motives and philosophy of its founders.
These things often change considerably over time, as was the case with the NRA.
Joe G July 15, 2015 at 5:45 PM
The NRA had to change due to liberals.
Tokyojim July 15, 2015 at 7:15 PM
Wait William, you are trying to compare PP with the
NRA? PP was born out of this type of a
worldview! That was the whole purpose of the organization from the get go. That
is a whole different thing than saying some of it's policies have changed over
time. The founder was an evil person and
had evil motives in beginning the organization! This is not a fair
comparison at all. You only try and
justify it because you too are a leftist.
William Spearshake July 15, 2015 at 7:41 PM
Have I said anything justifying PP?
Addendum 22/07/15
The above is a video response by Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In spite of Hunter's accusation I suspect that Ms Richards is telling the truth in good conscience: She does not deny that her organisation carries out abortions and distributes "fetal tissue" for research purposes, but she does deny that the organisation is profiting from this distribution; rumor has it that the rightists edited their video to give this false impression. Ms. Richards reels off the work Planned Parenthood is involved in "Cancer screening, birth control, STD detection and treatment and abortions"; reading Hunter you'd think that abortions was all that PP do! There is no real murder here and my feeling is that Ms Richards is doing what she feels to be right in good conscience. That's not to say I agree with abortion. For Planned Parenthood killing fetuses is just a job of work among others, comparable perhaps to the professional executioners task. Although I would not want to say that all of Planned Parenthood's clients have unjustified abortions, that troubling question remains in my mind: How many of those unborn children are aborted for quite marginal reasons and treated as unwanted parasitic machines fit only for experimental scrutiny?
Addendum 29/07/15
In the above video uber-feminist Rebecca Watson weighs in on the debate and takes exception to the term "baby parts" when used of something as small as a bean; better she thinks is "tissue". In this debate connotationalism looms large.
Footnotes:
*1 It is
possible that extreme Islam is in part a reaction to the mind boggling open
ended freedoms and choices of Western secularism.
In a blog post here evangelical atheist Larry Moran criticizes
a web article by Intelligent Design guru Kirk Durston. I know that Larry Moran is apt to call people
like Durston “IDiots”, but looking at Moran’s post I’m not surprised. Below I
quote both Durston and Moran as they appear on Moran’s post. As is my usual
practice I add my own comments.
***
Durston: In the neo-Darwinian scenario for the origin
and diversity of life, the digital functional information for life would have
had to begin at zero, (Wrong!)
increase over time to eventually encode the first simple life form, and
continue to increase via natural processes to encode the digital information for
the full diversity of life. An essential, falsifiable prediction of Darwinian
theory, therefore, is that functional information must, on average, increase
over time.(Wrong again!)
My Comment: This statement tells me that Durston is unfamiliar with the kind of the issues I
raised in my series on Joe Felsenstein’s and Tom English’s post on Panda’s Thumb
(see links below). If evolution is to work as currently understood, it must
start out with a full complement of information. This burden of information is
found in the abstract “sponge” structure that occupies configuration space: It
is this structure that acts as the “rails” which guide the evolutionary/OOL diffusion
processes. The "sponge" is conjectured to be an implication of physics. As such evolution is not a process that creates
information as Durston claims: Rather evolution is a process which transforms information from an abstract structure in configuration space to reified
organisms. Of course, I must qualify all this by registering my reservations
about the existence of this spongey structure: How I see evolution/OOL is
another story which I tell in my Melencolia I series. (I’ve got no
illusions that my own attempt to handle the OOL/evolution question would be
laughed off by pure secularists, but at least I won’t get censorious insults
about courting divine displeasure from them!)
Bellow I quote a
section of Moran’s post and add my comments
at the end (My emphases).
Moran: Contrast this [i.e. real evolutionary
theory] with the Intelligent Design
version of creationism. Apparently its
followers understand the mind of the "intelligent designer" because
they are prepared to make predictions about what he/she/it/them intended.
Here's how Kirk Durston describes it…..
Durston: Interestingly, a
prediction of intelligent design science is quite the opposite. Since
information always degrades over time for any storage media and replication
system, intelligent design science
postulates that the digital information of life wasinitially downloaded into the genomes of life. Itpredicts that, on average, genetic information is steadily
being corrupted by natural processes. The beauty of these two mutually
incompatible predictions in science is that the falsification of one entails
verification of the other. So which prediction does science falsify, and which
does science verify?
Moran:If I understand this correctly, the
Intelligent Design Creationists all
agree that all the information required to make complex organisms was written
into the genome at some time in the past (3.5 billion years ago according
to many ID proponents). Since that
time, the intelligent designer has allowed that information to steadily degrade
so that eventually all species will become extinct. (I don't know how Durston came to understand the mind of the gods.)
Durston:This is the first problem for neo-Darwinian
theory. Mutations produce random changes in the digital information of life. It
is generally agreed that the rate of deleterious mutations is much greater than
the rate of beneficial mutations. My own work with 35 protein families suggests
that the rate of destruction is, at minimum, 8 times the rate of neutral or
beneficial mutations.
Simply put, the digital information of life is being
destroyed much faster than it can be repaired or improved. New functions may
evolve, but the overall loss of functional information in other areas of the
genome will, on average, be significantly greater. The net result is that the
digital information of life is running down.
Moran: Isn't that interesting?
Intelligent Design Creationists believe that over the past 3.5 billion years
the genetic information in simple bacteria has been steadily degrading at a
rate 8 times the rate of beneficial mutations.
Aside from the fact that Durston's statement is
ridiculous, it says something very weird about the intelligent designer that
these creationists believe in. Those gods
intelligent designers don't resemble any human engineers or computer
programmers that I've ever met. Humans would have done a better job of
designing in the first place and they would make sure that crucial systems get
frequent updates and repairs to keep them working. (My emphasis)
My Comment: Moran is
right: Durston is making implicit assumptions about the way his purported
intelligent agent works. This has lead the de-facto ID community into an
inconsistency: On the one hand IDists will claim that the function of ID science is only detect
the presence of intelligence and make little or no assertion as to character of
that intelligence. And yet whenever the IDists attempt to make predictions we
find they are working from an implicit raft of assumptions about the way that
intelligence works (as does Durston above). In fact I would submit that even to make sense of the works of an intelligent agent requires a background knowledge of just what intelligence is and the kind things it does. I made a similar point to Moran’s “Apparently its followers understand the mind
of the "intelligent designer” in this post. Viz:
And yet the ID community claims to be able to make
predictions such as economy of design and absence of Junk DNA. I suggest that
they cannot make these predictions unless they are actually making implicit
assumptions about the nature of the intelligence they are dealing with; there
is therefore an inconsistency in Torley’s thought: He can’t make claim to
knowing so little about the nature of the intelligent agent and yet at the same
time try and pass on predictions that contain implicit assumptions about that
intelligence. After all, motive, that is emotions, are a huge part of any
practical intelligence and we need some inkling of those motives to make
predictions. But when we do hazard postulating something about the nature of
the intelligence involved the resultant science is far from exact, in fact it
is a science that is a lot softer than archaeology (see also: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/does-intelligent-design-make-testable.html).
Durston, as other
IDists, is very naturally interpreted as a dualist God-of-the-Gaps thinker. This is what comes over to Larry Moran and it certainly also comes over
to me. As Moran says Durston conjures up a picture of a God who, on occasion, downloads
a piece of his mind into molecular matter and then steps back and allows it to
degrade. This is a classical deist conception of God. No doubt the ID
community will try to deny this, but the fact is whenever they attempt to
explain ID to themselves they appear to fall into the dualist and desitical trap of god-of-the-gaps style thinking. Part of the problem seems to be down to their explanatory filter
epistemic (See here) but a lot of it may be down
to a default Western dualist philosophy of God.
***
As is the way
with communities who have become the target of general disdain, marginalisation and insult, the
de-facto IDists have reacted with an insular embattled mentality. We therefore find
Durston simply repeating the fallacies of his IDist peer group. As I’ve recently expressed in this blog post
the de-facto ID community have been a huge disappointment to me: They have
screwed up in several issues and don’t seem to have the self-critical back bone
to dig themselves out of the hole they are in. There is one advantage of the
secular community (and “secular” does not necessarily equate to “atheist”) that
some insular Christian sub-cultures are unlikely to benefit from: Viz: the secular
scientific community is less a community than it is a disorderly free for all.
Although the dangers of nihilism and postmodernism are ever present among pure
secularists, disagreement at the price of unity is not something they lose
sleep over. On the other hand closeted and sectarian Christian communities do
lose sleep over it and end up forming a tight-knit penguin cluster who are very
easy targets for the machine gun fire of criticism. That the ID community have
so badly failed in the area of apologetics is, for a Christian like myself, disquieting;
on the whole they are some of the most intelligent and reasonable evangelical believers
around*. But if the de-facto IDists are performing so badly on the apologetics
front that doesn't bode well for the anti-science Christian fundamentalists.
.
Safety in
numbers? Not when there are Maxims about!
Part 6 of my Melencolia series can be found here. I reproduce the introduction to this paper below:
***
1Introduction
In
this short paper I make a proposal as to the nature of quantum leaps. These
“leaps” are the apparentdiscontinuous
changes of the quantum mechanical Hilbert vector, a vector which otherwise
moves continuously according to a deterministic wave equation. I have come down
in favour of the view that these leaps are literal
rather than apparent. The following
paper is largely a qualitative discussion of a subject which could no doubt bear
a lot more rigorous quantitative formulation. However, in this Melencolia I
series my sights are really on the evolutionary and OOL questions and I hope I
have enough in this paper on quantum leaping to assess its impact on my general
objectives. But having said that I’m not quite sure just where this paper
leaves my ideas about a declarative model of evolutionary computation. For on
the face of it my proposal on quantum leaping seems to hamstring the searching
that would be needed to find the configurations of life: This is because the “leaps”
would, apparently, clear the quantum signalling field before it could make any
worthwhile discoveries. One little consolation, however, is that in conceiving
matter as a combination of a coherent object and a shadowy gravitational field
I find some scope for fixing the energy problem thrown up by proposing literal
quantum leaps.
The
general idea that guides the Melencolia I series is the view that intelligence
is a process, a process with a general declarative structure, of search, reject and select. Thus, the life
generating processes are, in this context, viewed as intelligence at work and therefore open to observational scrutiny.
This very much contrasts with the views of the de-facto ID community who
envisage intelligence as a kind of black box very distinct from natural processes. This black box gets
little or no analytical treatment from the de-facto IDists. In contrast one thing that encourages me to pursue
the endogenous ID proposal is the
fact that the our current understanding of the mind suggests conscious
cognition is very much bound up with the material organisation of the brain; That is, we do not see “mind” down at the low
neuronal level; these low level elements
are wholly impersonal. But at the high
level personality becomes apparent. Likewise we don’t see cosmic
intelligence/personality operating at the low particulate level, but we may
only see it in the big picture. This is not to say that current
molecular views of the mind are the full answer; for example, we may eventually
have to feed into to the mix the ideas of people like John Searle, Roger
Penrose or whoever.
As
I continue to use this series to explore the processes that generate life there
is, I feel, little chance I’m following anything like the right path. But as I
always say: Enjoy the journey while you can because the destination may not be
up to much! And below, the journey so far…..
All I can say is that it's a good thing it's going no where near the sea!
The above picture shows the current progress of the full-size Noah's Ark being constructed at the "Answers in Genesis" theme park. The line taken by the thin curving piece of wood on the extreme right appears to show the shape of the hull in cross section. This cross-section is worth comparing with the cross section of Nelson's ship HMS Victory:
HMS Victory: This is what a sea-worthy X-section looks like!
Now it's probably true that HMS Victory as a warship was over-engineered, but even so look at the relative thickness of the hull in comparison with its size: The Hull was about 2 feet thick for a boat 186 feet long by 51 feet wide; the internal floor beams are also very thick. Compare this with the Ark's 500 foot length and 86 foot width - in volume much, much bigger than Nelson's ship. Since weight goes up with the cube of linear dimension I would expect a genuine sea-worthy Ark to have a cross section that reflects this - that is, the amount of wood thickness employed in cross section to be proportionally greater than that of HMS Victory*. Now, it's true I 'm not a ship engineer who has done the calculations but to my eye AiG's "Ark" looks decidedly flimsy: As an out-sized garden shed designed to support several floors of visitor exhibits and keep the weather out it's no doubt fine, but it looks far too spindly to stand the buffeting of a catastrophic global flood. This is no genuinely scientific or technical demonstration of the Ark's plausible construction, but rather an Ark-shaped exhibition centre. My guess is that the "hull" of AiG's Ark will be covered in a thin facade of planks and that's highly symbolic because in the final analysis that's what this "Ark" project is all about: namely, a matchstick facade sufficient to give visitors the impression of being inside the Ark. If AiG want an authentic testimony to their belief that the Ark sailed the high seas of a huge global flood they will have to increase the cross sectional thicknesses considerably; but I suppose that would be far too expensive. All in all it looks as though it's a monumental folly and an embarrassment to the Christian faith; This thoroughly sham construction will simply convey the message that Christianity is all about the ability to believe in fairy tales
8/7/15: Panda's Thumb has a post on this subject here: http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2015/07/awful-lot-of-go.html
Noah according to the gospel of toytown.
Footnote:
* Compare the way the cross section of dinosaur bones increases in relation to their increasing volume: small animals can walk on spindly legs: dinosaurs that weigh in at around 70 tons have extremely thick legs.
North America isn't very much at one with itself nowadays. Some right wingers still seem to be fighting a version of the anti-taxation war of independence. I'm not just thinking of the Tea Party, but also the Sovereign Citizen movement and "Operation American Spring": See below:
This is not to say that I would have supported the British Crown's war against the American settlers; My own church (Norwich Central Baptist Church) supported the American revolutionarys in those days. That's no surprise because the Norwich Baptists of the day had also had enough of oppressive government interference. (See here). But in spite of the fact that the American revolution had radical Whig roots, today, ironically, that war has come to symbolize gun toting right wing America! The Whig aversion to the centralised power of an absolute monarchy has morphed into something weird in America!
And now we find the North-South fault line also starting show up: Here's someone taking down to the old Confederate flag after the recent Carolina massacre of black-church members in a racially motivated attack.
According to the BBC article where I found this picture There has been a social media
campaign to remove the flag. But I think these southern guys below want it put back up:
The BBC caption on this picture is: There have been rallies to support the use of the flag.
Right-wing extremists have an unfortunate tendency to send up the USA. Obama, however, rises above the mean minded right-wingers, fundamentalists and cranky conspiracy theorists with statesman like grace: All I can say is thank God for a dignified Christian president. Let's also thank God for the black church who faced a massacre of innocents: Their response to barbarianism was a pinnacle of civilisation; if only there was more of it the world.
Even if one
accepts the 1989 radiocarbon 14 dating which puts the shroud between about
1260 and 1390, the shroud is, as the article says, “a
deeply puzzling object”.
The radiocarbon
dating is consistent with the first historical reference to the shroud which
the BBC article gives as 1357 in Lirey, France. (Although Wikipedia thinks 1390
is more certain). I’m hardly an authority on medieval art or techniques, but
it strikes me that for the shroud to be a work of art of considerable technical
expertise we would have to push the artifact well into the Renaissance; it is
far too early for that. In any case the article suggests that the material
evidence for the shroud being a painting is slim. That leaves us with various
mechanical and/or natural means of generating what seems to be a very realistic
looking, technically correct even, picture of a crucified man. In this
connection the article goes on to consider some possibilities. Viz: Various chemical
reactions in the cloth catalyzed by the presence of a real dead body or perhaps it was created by skilled medieval technologists who knew enough to make a crude photo of an effigy or may be even of a crucified
dead body. But it turns out there are
problems with all these explanations.
If we assume that
the cloth is the genuine article and we have no inhibitions about invoking
fairly exotic processes in its formation, there is still a question in my mind:
When the image was formed presumably the
cloth would have been wrapped tightly round the body of Christ. I suppose one
really needs to do some experimentation with real shrouds and know something
about first century Jewish funerary practices, but off the top of my head I
would have thought that this wrapping would so distort the receiving medium of
the cloth that the image would hardly look like two photographic plates taken front
and back!* But if one is willing to invoke exotic processes in the formation of
the image, no doubt the imagination can soon fix this little query!
And finally an
irony: Aficionados of evangelical atheism, of course, won’t countenance even a hint of doubt about the natural or human origins of the shroud image.
But guess who else detests this very Catholic artifact of devotion and
is thoroughly committed to the idea that it is a fake? Take a look at an extract from a letter to
the May Premier Christianity magazine
in response to an article on the Turin Shroud the month before:
John’s Gospel says that Jesus’ head was covered by a
cloth separate from the linen Shroud. As
the Turin Shroud is in one piece it cannot be genuine. It has no place in a true
engagement with the risen Christ. The Shroud has been shown by many historical
tests to be a 14th century fake, dating from a time awash with
similar artifacts. The pieces of “evidence” in the article sidestep those conclusive proofs. The article is a disingenuous
attempt at promoting credulous superstition. That leaves with me with real
concern that Premier Christianity has put its name at risk.
Now it may well
be the shroud is a fake, but I would certainly not want to argue along the
lines of this naive piece of fundamentalist prejudice: It doesn’t follow that
the presence of a head cloth entails the absence of a full length shroud – one would
have to delve into the history of the funerary practices of the time before one
could use this head cloth reference as a basis to assert with any level of confidence that “it cannot be genuine”. Moreover, head cloth or no head cloth it would
all very much depend on the process of image formation, a process which if
it involved the “supernatural” would introduce so many possibilities that we've no knowing what could happen under such circumstances!
The BBC article appears not to be aware of those “conclusive proofs” that the letter writer claims exist and in any case is science
ever absolutely conclusive? And where are those "similar artifacts" of the period comparable with the Shroud's apparent expertise?
I’m not quite
sure what evangelical tradition this fundamentalist is coming from:
Fundamentalists who style themselves as “Reformed Christians”, who loathe the Catholic
Church and are still fighting the Reformation would certainly not accept that
such a “heretical” institution is the custodian of the real shroud of Christ. But a
Reformed Christian is unlikely to write to a charismatically flavored magazine
like Christianity. So perhaps this
person is what I call a reformo-charismatic. But whatever:
Notice that as is the wont of fundamentalism we find juxtaposed with the superlatives
of high devotion (like “true engagement with
the risen Christ”) the utmost spiritually condemning terms; in this case
accusations of hypocrisy, dishonesty and the promoting of superstition! This is why I don’t get on with fundies (and
some evangelicals) – even when their conclusions may well be right I
still don’t agree with them. This is mainly because they are so arrogantly certain
of their opinions and so ready to accuse more liberal Christians of heresy and blasphemy! What’s wrong with a bit of self-skepticism, self-doubt and self-criticism? Everything in the fundamentalist's eyes: To criticize self is to criticize one's opinions and to criticize one's opinions is to criticize the Bible where those opinions are claimed to originate; and that is tantamount to criticizing God himself! Such intellectual vice!
Footnote
* This query extends to all explanations that
posit the formation of the image whilst the body was wrapped; but it is only a query: May be laying the body on one half of the shroud and then gently draping the other half over the body generates the sort of relation between shroud and body we are looking for.
Postscript (21 June)
So what's my opinion of this object: Real or Fake? That could be another false dichotomy as I shall explain. A less loaded question is: Is the shroud from the first century or the late middle ages? Although I have a measure of open mindedness about this puzzling object, on balance I think it originates from the late middle ages. This is because I find the coincidence of the radiocarbon dating with the historical references fairly compelling: If a miraculous first century image formation process somehow had the effect of distorting the radiocarbon dating it seems unlikely that it would contrive such a coincidence. Alternatively, if the cloth has become contaminated in someway (e.g. with repairs) during its passage through history would this have the likely effect of returning a radiocarbon dating that coincided with the date of its first historical reference?
There is also an internal consistency question that arises if one is prepared to accept that the shroud is a product of exotic paranormal processes. If such processes are available is it just possible that the image could conceivably have been impressed on a late medieval cloth in response to the psyche of the medieval mindset, a mindset that as we know was obsessed with relics? After all, there are claims of paranormal images having been imprinted upon photographic plates, floor tiles and even human bodies. In fact, perhaps even God himself arranged for this to happen in order to give post black death medieval devotion something to hook on! It it is also conceivable within the paranormal paradigm that God inspired skilled medieval workmen to do his bidding! Who knows? Of course, these sorts of hypotheses are unlikely, but if you are prepared to accept the miraculous in the formation of the image, these candidates should be weighed and rejected or selected.
I would love to think the object is the real thing, but as I have said "real or fake" may be inappropriate categories expressing an implicit valued judgement. Perhaps the Catholic church has the right idea in not commenting one way or the other. If the shroud is a 14th century creation (as opposed to a "fake") it still remains a very singular object and a very realistic depiction of the end result of crucified suffering. Whether it be a work of art, a medieval technological feat, or perhaps even a record of some 14th century paranormal event, it nevertheless is so remarkable in its execution that like any really good piece of art it inspires; and that can't be bad - unless you are an evangelical atheist or an artless fundamentalist Christian!
Spiegel Online says:Trucks belonging to the German aid agency GTZ in Liberia. Aid is often presented as a kind of gift, with no strings attached. Critics say that such a model does not work. "These perpetual gifts have made parnters into beggars," writes development aid veteran Kurt Gerhardt.
Western managers oversee African project workers. Westerners still have an air of superior patriarchs. Spiegel Online says "Expertise can be helpful, as here in Adama, Ethiopia. But foreign aid workers should not get in the way of local initiative."
The man on the right in the suit may be an official African aid partner who is likely to be materially benefiting from the relationship with Western aid organisations. Spiegel Online says: ".... some say that we need to get away from the idea the more money necessarily means more help."
If conventional evolutionary theory and OOL are to work then
configuration space must look something like this, with thin strands of
survivability/stability/self-perpetuation permeating configuration space:
Forget fitness surfaces!
This is the last in the series where I am looking at a
post by Joe Felsenstein and Tom English (FE). In their post FE
critique a paper by Intelligent Design gurus Dembski, Ewert and Marks (DEM). The other parts of this series can be seen here, here and here
In their critique of DEM’s paper FE construct a simple toy model of
evolution. This model they call the “Greedy Uphill Climbing Bug” (GUCB) –
basically it is an algorithm which always moves in the direction of greatest
“fitness” – that is in the direction of greatest slope of the “fitness surface”
or “fitness field”, a field which is
conjectured to pervade configuration space. The point they make from this model
is simple and valid: It shows that a smooth fitness field (a smoothness which
is a likely consequence of the laws of physics as Joe Felsenstein points out),
when combined with a GUCB algorithm, entails a lot of “active information”. In
fact FE find that even a white noise fitness field also implies a lot of “active
information”. “Active Information” is a
term used by DEM to refer to the inherent up front informational bias of a
search, a bias which means that the search does better than random chance.
Admittedly FE’s model is not a very realistic; but as FE state it needn’t
be realistic to make their point: It simply shows that fairly basic mathematical
conditions can supply a considerable level of active information. However, in
spite of FE’s work I have to confess that I have doubts about the efficacy of
the current model of evolution as a generator life. To see why let’s take a
closer look at the GUCB algorithm.
FE put their GUCB algorithm in a configuration space implied by a genome
of 3000 bases. At any given starting position the GUCB senses the direction of greatest slope (i.e. greatest fitness) and
then moves in that direction. Now, how is this apparently simple algorithm
realised in terms of real biology? Well, firstly in order for the GUCB to determine
which direction to move it must first put out feelers in no less than 3000 directions.
In real biology it is claimed that this is not done by systematically working
through the 3000 cases, but by the algorithmically inefficient trial and error steps of random mutation. Once a mutation enters a population it must then be tested
by the complex selection processes which determine structural viability, environmental fitness and
competition. If it survives this test – which may take several generations of
progeny – then the organism can move on;
if it fails, the process must start all over again with a new randomly selected mutation. So, it
is clear that successfully moving in any direction at all in configuration space entails, in real biology,
a very large number of computational operations and trials.
Now, I’m not going to contradict the contention that perhaps given large
tracts of geological time real biology is capable of moving forward in this
laborious random-walk trial and error process: I’m not a mathematical biologist
so I won’t make any claims on that score. But one thing is very clear to me,
and it should be clear to anyone else: Viz, because the stepping process
consumes so much time the structure that is doing the stepping must be stable and endowed with sufficient persistence and self-perpetuation in the first place. That
is, although the structure may not be of the “fittest” quality, it must
nevertheless be fit enough to make the next step in configuration space. If the structure wasn’t at least this fit it
wouldn’t survive long enough to move anywhere in configuration space. So, implicit in the GUCB model is the
assumption that the points in configuration space are allfit – that is,
capable of survival long enough to step through configuration space.
It is the property of stability/survivability
rather than fitness that begs the big
64 million dollar question. Namely, is configuration space populated with enough
stable self-perpetuating structures
to provide the pathways on which the GUCB can move? For the GUCB to move around in configuration
space the class of stable structures must be a continuously connected set. That is, for standard evolution to work the self-perpetuating structures in configuration space must form a reducibly complex set*; that is, working, stable functionality cannot be isolated into concentrated islands. If the
set of self-perpetuating structures does exist
then I envisage it to look something like a kind of thin spongy structure that
stretches across configuration space (See picture at the head of this post).
It was the question of whether this spongy structure actually exists in configuration space
which I posed in my configuration space series, a series whose last post can be
picked up here. In the second part of this series
I wrote:
Axiom 2 tells us that the set of
living structures is tiny compared to the set of all possible
non-self-perpetuating structures. This fact is an outcome of axiom 1 and the
nature of disorder: If living structures occupy the mid regions between high
order and high disorder then the logarithmic nature of the vertical axis on the
LogZ-S graph will imply that disordered configurations are overwhelmingly more
numerous. This raises the question of
whether there are simply too few self-perpetuating structures to populate
configuration space even with a very thin spongy structure; in fact the
spongy structure may be so thin that although mathematically speaking we will
have an in-principle reducible complexity, in terms of practical probabilities
the structure is so tenuous that it may as well not exist!
Of course I have no analytical demonstration addressing this question
and I doubt any one else has: How can we count the class of stable structures?
For a start it very much depends on the complex environment those structures
are in; in fact those structures are themselves part of that environment and so we have
a convoluted non-linear feed-back relationship linking structure to environment. I suspect, therefore we are
dealing with something here that is computationally irreducible.
But be all that as it may, my intuitions are that my question is answered in
the negative: That is, the number of stable self-perpetuating structures is far
too small to populate configuration space sufficiently to connect itself into a
spongy structure that sprawls extensively across that space. If this
conjecture is correct then it would make conventional evolution and OOL impossible.
It was this feeling that resulted in my terminating the configuration space
series and returning to early ideas that I started expressing publicly in my Melencolia I series, a series I continue to pursue.
Appendix
In this appendix I’ll assume that the class of stable self-perpetuating structures
are grouped into a sponge like structure that stretches extensively across
configuration space. If this is the case then we can see that evolution/OOL is less about differentials in fitness than
it about survivability and stability. In the sponge model of configuration
space evolution and OOL are envisaged as traversing the sponge with a kind of random
walk based diffusional motion. However, it is possible that in some places the
random walk is directionally biased, implying that certain parts of the sponge
represent “fitter” structures than other parts of the sponge. In effect, then,
a “fitness field” would pervade the structure of the sponge; this would
mean that some areas of the sponge act like potential wells attracting the diffusion motion. However, it is equally possible that in other places
there is no bias and the evolutionary/OOL diffusion is neutral; this is not to say
that evolution is then without direction; as I have made clear before the
sponge structure permeating configuration space acts as tramlines directing
evolutionary diffusion. This latter point seems to be something that atheists
don’t always understand. See the comments section of this post where I took up this
question with atheist Chris
Nedin. He appears to have absolutely
no inkling of just how profoundly directional his concept of evolution
is required to be; frankly, he seems to be pulling the wool over his own eyes.
See also: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/the-road-to-somewhere.html
Footnote: Why I repudiate the
de-facto IDists
* It follows then that an irreducibly
complex set of structures is a highly disconnected set. This definition of irreducible
complexity is different from the definition used by the de-facto Intelligent
Design community, who once again seemed to have screwed up: See the link below about why
their definition doesn’t work:
Let me get the following complaint off my chest: When I first came to this debate
I had high hopes of the de-facto ID community. After all, they were in the main
reasonable and moderate evangelicals like William Dembski. Moreover, I’ve
always agreed with their premise that the information burden of our cosmos isn’t
trivial and that this presents an enigma. However, I have become increasingly
disillusioned with them: They have screwed up on various technical issues like irreducible
complexity and the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Their so-called explanatory
filter encourages dualistic God-of-Gaps theology. They are too uncritical of fundamentalism
and in some cases harbour unreasonable religious fanatics in their midst. They
also have a default well-right-of-centre political stance which I
can’t support. They are right-wing and fundamentalist sympathizers and this seems to be bound up with their disdain of government funded academics, a group that the fundamentalists, for obvious reasons, also hate.
The above is a
schematic of the Intelligent Design community’s explanatory filter, an epistemic proposed by ID guru William
Dembski for detecting the presence of Intelligent Design. Other versions of
this epistemic can be found on the internet but they all have multiple issues. In fact from a theological point of view the
worst problem of the filter is that it prompts a God vs. Nature dualism when the intelligence is identified with God.
As I have remarked many times before if one runs through this procedure and
finds that life can, after all, be generated by “natural” law and disorder processes then the filter might lead one to
conclude “Life isn’t designed”, a
conclusion which ultimately threatens theism. As a consequence this epistemic
has helped create strong polarization of the debate: The ID community stake all
on the belief that “natural processes” (i.e. physics) simply can’t generate
life and they use bogus arguments to prove this to themselves: See for example their misuse of the 2nd law of thermodynamics,
a point of view that they are committed to defend at all costs. Conversely, atheists have a huge stake in
finding ways whereby OOL and evolution might work without recourse to "black box" intelligent activity filling any gaps.
As well as
theological problems I have a couple of smaller niggles with Dembski’s procedure:
Firstly, his separation of law and chance; in my experience physics tends to
form one seamless law and disorder (L&D)
package. Secondly, I’m growing more and
more uncomfortable with the IDist dichotomy of intelligence vs. L&D
processes. After all, it appears that the functioning of the human mind has a
considerable point by point conformity with neural operations, operations which
in large measure at least follow known L&D principles. This polarization of
L&D and intelligence into two separate categories may be fundamentally
flawed.
The dichotomies championed by the ID movement influences the whole way they think about the subject. Their parceling
“intelligence” into a separate black box category seems to be the reason why
some of them, of late, have been digging themselves into another hole: Viz they are declaring
that it is sufficient for their purposes to simply identify an object to be the
product of intelligence with little or nothing being claimed about the character
of the intelligence involved. To my mind this is clearly an error which potentially
undermines the whole ID project: Since it is necessary to have at least some
inkling about the nature of intelligence in the first instance in order to
identify and anticipate its works, this strategy entails a contradiction. But in actual fact one finds that attempts
by the ID community to use their ideas to make predictions do depend at least on a modicum of
implicit understanding about the nature of the intelligence involved!. In
particular, the prediction by IDists about there being no junk DNA is posited on the basis of an assumption about how an intelligence may prefer to work.
However, although
I believe that Dembski’s broad brush epistemic procedure falls over when it is
invoked in disciplines like theology, philosophy, and the nature of intelligence,
it is nevertheless true that something like it does apply in many everyday situations where we try to determine
whether or not an event or object has an “artificial” or “natural” origins.
Moreover, the epistemic is also relevant to archeologists and imaginary scenarios
like 2001 Space Odyssey. But in an attempt to fix some of the filter's problems and improve
its robustness and durability in more nuanced disciplines I have designed this procedure:
In the above procedure we get hold of some “object” to be
investigated (top box) and then pass it on to a process called “Get Object Origins”. This latter process
may well contain something that looks like Dembski’s explanatory filter, a
procedure which attempts to explain an object either in terms of L&D or intelligent
agency – but you will notice that I make no explicit reference to this
dichotomy because it is not as sharply defined as the ID community make out.
Also, in the flow diagram above things don’t end there. We go onto to create an
“origins object” and then after outputting the results we ask the question is
this object complete? By that I mean
that some decision has to be made as to whether the explanatory activity has
found an object which is deemed to be a complete explanation of the cosmos. I’m
in no way suggesting here that explanatory
completeness is something that is either easily attributed or can be done
so without controversy – this decision box clearly hides plenty of
philosophical cut and thrust. However, if ever the explanatory project is deemed complete
the process halts. If on the other hand the epistemic procedure doesn’t halt
the “origins object” is submitted
back to the “Get object origins”
process which is in affect now attempting to get the origins of the
origins. This means that if OOL and
evolution should, within acceptable scientific standards, be demonstrated to be
a product of known physics that physics may
then itself be submitted to origins research. I emphasize "may" here: Who knows; if biology is shown to be a product of physics
some people may experience no philosophical unease making them feel there are further questions to be answered. For
theists on the other hand this would be unacceptable: They will likely feel
that even the most complete L&D physical regime calls for more origins
research. Moreover, some atheists may also be inclined to resubmit their
physics to origins research, perhaps hypothesizing some kind of L&D
multiverse. So, in short my procedure
caters for both philosophically minded atheists as well as theists.
The belief that the
detection of the presence of intelligent agency can be sharply distinguished
from questions about the nature of the intelligence concerned appears to be another
of the ID community’s false dichotomies. But this dichotomy does not sit well with
the comments of one of their own gurus, Granville Sewell. I applauded Sewell’s
comments and made reference to them in this blog post. In that post I suggested that Sewell was
starting to open up what these other IDists treat as a black box in which sits
some kind of localised alien homunculus. In contrast Sewell is starting to discover the
consequence of the fact that intelligence is not an intensively located homunculus, but
an extensive property spread over more than one subsystem, and which probably involves,
I submit, non-locality. The problems introduced by thinking there is a sharp (and
artificial) demarcation between intelligence and L&D is once again foisting
upon theists a Pandora’s box of problems.
Theists like me were once sitting comfortably, but then along came.....
Appendix
Below is
my enhanced explanatory filter expressed in C-like pseudo code. I have made it recursive in order to give it
an elegant look.
Fundamental =
FALSE;
FindObjectOrigins(Object) /*Submit
object being researched to function */
{
OriginsFlag; /*
Flag for origins type */
OriginObject; /*
Data about origins */
If (Fundamental) then Halt; /*
Halt if object is fundamental */
OriginsFlag = GetOriginsOfObject(Object, OriginsObject&
); /*Is object generated by ID or
L&D?*/
