Mixing with the Right People.

My poor old irony meter seems to be taking a bashing at the moment. See here on Uncommon Descent where I commented on the very interesting work of Dr Robert Sheldon. See also here and here where I leave comments on Dr Sheldon’s blog on the conservative “Townhall.com” web site – a site endorsed by Anne Coulter….which gives me another excuse to publish a picture of this lovely looking lady:

By the way: The only way I could sign up on “Town.com” was to pretend I was from an American state. I chose the Midwest’s Iowa as I have been there. Cedar Rapids, where I was based, with its rural hinterland, felt a bit like Norwich. I remember comparing notes with one of Cedar Rapids' citizen and we both agreed that we didn't like big cities. I think we were both rubes and would be well out of our depth at a New York republican convention (= heaven, according to Ann)

A God of Some Sort

After my last post on the aspects of anti-evolution ID theory I feel unhappy about, it is very timely that William Dembski has published this post on Uncommon Descent illustrating just what I mean.

Dembski starts by quoting Frank Zindler who expresses the view that a literal Adman and Eve, the fall, original sin and the need of salvation are all incompatible with evolution: Basically the sort of stuff one gets from many a Bible Belt fundamentalist, but with one minor difference: Frank Zindler is an atheist and to him this is all just so much counterfactual theology. It goes to show that there is such a thing as a “Bible Belt” atheist; that is, an atheist who shares Bible Belt mental categories and therefore subliminally reasons and thinks about deity just like a Bible Belter. (Albeit counterfactually)

However, this is by the by. Dembski says of Zindler:

But Zindler is not arguing for the mere compatibility of evolution with atheism; he is also claiming that evolution implies, as in rationally compels, atheism. This implication is widely touted by atheists. Richard Dawkins pushes it. Cornell historian of biology and atheist Will Provine will even call evolution “the greatest engine for atheism” ever devised. To claim that evolution implies atheism is, however, logically unsound (even though sociological data supports the loss of faith as a result of teaching evolution). Theistic evolutionists such as Francis Collins, Denis Alexander, and Kenneth Miller provide a clear counterexample, showing that at least some well-established biologists think it’s possible for the two to be compatible. Moreover, there’s no evident contradiction between an evolutionary process bringing about the complexity and diversity of life and a god of some sort (deistic, Stoic, etc.?) providing the physical backdrop for evolution to operate.

With that I agree, but make note of this: The evolutionary beliefs of Collins, Alexander and Miller are, as Dembski generously concedes, apparently consistent with “a god of some sort”. It’s a good thing that these are New Testament days, because I think Dembski will find that in Old Testament times worshipping “a god of some sort” could attract the death penalty. Otherwise so far so good, but be warned things start to go downhill from now on. Dembski goes on to say:

The reverse implication, however, does seem to hold: atheism implies evolution (a gradualist, materialist form of evolution, the prime example being Darwinian). Indeed, the atheist has no other rational options in explaining the diversity and complexity of life. The atheist may, in the face of reason, invoke pure chance to explain the emergence of life.

Atheism implies evolution? In a synthetic and probabilistic sense this is certainly true in that if one is given a person who is an atheist there is a high chance he or she is an evolutionist. But Dembski suggests that atheists have no other “rational” options open to them. This is a bit too strong: There is a measure of subjectivity in gauging just what is rational: One man’s rationality is another man’s idiocy. Would atheists who invoked a multiverse in order explain abiogenesis as a “pure chance” leap classify as being rational or irrational? What about atheist Fred Hoyle’s panspermia and his foray into a kind “alien” intelligent design? And where do we position those who say we are part of a gigantic simulation? It is certainly not clear to me that Darwinian gradualism is the only option open to atheists; it just seems to be the only game in town that currently appeals to most atheists for reasons that I suggested in my last post.


But Dembski then goes on to propose a necessary disjoint between intelligent design and evolution as per the following:

The rationale here is a simple application of the logical rules modus ponens (If A, then B; A; therefore B) and modus tollens (If A, then B; not B; therefore not A). Thus,
Premise 1: If atheism is true, then so is Darwinian evolution.
Premise 2: But if ID is true, then Darwinian evolution is false.
Premise 3: ID is true (the controversial premise).
Conclus 1: Therefore Darwinian evolution is false (modus ponens applied to Premises 2 and 3)
Conclus 2: Therefore atheism is false (modus tollens applied to Premise 1 and Conclus 1)

Premise 1 is unclear. Does “If atheism is true” equate to “If there is no god”? Is Dembski saying “If there is no God then evolution follows”? Is he saying that in the absence of the Aseity of Deity evolution has the logical efficacy to create life and can make good the absence of a divine creator? If so atheist materialists would probably agree. If this is Dembski’s meaning then it goes to show that there is such a thing as a “materialist” Christian; that is, a Christian who shares “naturalist” categories and can thus subliminally reason and think about “naturalism” like a materialist. Or have I got Dembski’s meaning here completely wrong? Does he simply mean that if a person believes in atheism he will believe in evolution? After all “atheism” is a belief about an ontology and not the ontology itself; Dembski has not made clear the distinction between atheism as a belief and atheism as an ontology.

Premise 2 is clearly false. If the cosmos is sourced in some kind of self-necessary intelligence it is not clear to me that it follows that Darwinian evolution is false: As I have indicated in this blog, if evolution is to work in a realistic time, it requires the right mathematical preconditions (if they exist), and those preconditions can be construed as an ID choice made by some super intelligence. However, it is very likely that the idea that an act of intelligent design is required to set up a working version of evolution is not consistent with Southern Baptist Bible Belt creation theology - Dembski’s Southern Baptist outlook would very likely see a conflict between evolution and Christian theism (as per atheist Frank Zindler). So perhaps premise 2 should read as follows:

Premise2: “If Southern Baptist Bible Belt theology is true then Darwinian evolution is false”

Premise 3: As a theist I would accept this premise, but not in the sense that Dembski defines ID (See the following). Clearly then on the proceeding basis Dembski’s conclusion 1 does not follow. But it seems that Dembski’s aim is to define both ID and “Darwinian” evolution in such a way as to drive a wedge between them; they are in his view mutually exclusive as this passage shows:

When I got into this business 20 years ago, I thought that any Christian (and indeed any theist), given solid evidence against Darwinian evolution (as ID is now increasingly providing—see my book The Design of Life and Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell) would be happy to trash it and move to some form of intelligent design (whether discrete creations or gradual guidance or information front-loading or whatever). But that has not happened. Theistic evolutionists have now baptized Darwinism. Thus, in the 2001 PBS evolution series, Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller referred to himself as an orthodox Catholic and an orthodox Darwinian.

According to Dembski then conventional evolution is not a front loaded process. This is at variance with my own view that evolution, no matter how one defines it, or for that matter any process one constructs which is able to arrive at complex order in “fast time”, must necessarily be front loaded; a front loading that is easily construed by a theist as a gift of providence.

In some respects Dembski well demonstrates what I suspect are subliminal commonalities of mindset between the Christian Right and the Militant atheists. As I said in my last post:

If evolution has occurred then it clearly keeps its load of active information well hidden, so much so that neither the anti-evolutionists nor militant atheists are aware of it; or perhaps they just don’t want to acknowledge it. In the opinion of both parties evolution purports to be a process that can boot strap living configurations from next to nothing. Thus anti-evolutionists and atheists have very large stakes in the respective presence or absence of explicit information discontinuities in nature; in contrast evolution’s information discontinuity is very implicit and is not to be found in material reifications, like front loaded genetic information.

Using Venn diagram notation the picture that Dembski is foisting on all theists is shown below:

(Click to enlarge)

Notice that in the above diagram ID and evolution do not overlap; they are mutually exclusive. In this diagram we see that according to Dembski all atheists are evolutionists and that a subset of theists find themselves (compromisingly) in the evolutionist camp. Needless to say this is where Dembski and I sharply part company. I would suggest that the true picture looks more like this:

(Click to enlarge)

This diagram indicates the logical impossibility of constructing processes that create complex order in “fast time” without a blatant “logical hiatus” or “information discontinuity” being present. I see no way out of this logical trap; evolution or any other process inevitably displays this logical discontinuity. Therefore I have presumptuously labeled this all inclusive set as “intelligent design” because being a theist I see this as the gift of providence. Moreover, the real picture is far more complicated than Dembski suggests: As my Venn diagram shows atheists are not necessarily evolutionists. In fact when constructing the above Venn diagram I contemplated drawing the atheist and evolution circles projecting partly beyond the “ID” circle in order to suggest an atheist attempt to escape the trap of a Logical Hiatus – although I personally can’t see how that can be achieved and so I have shown atheism to reside inside the ID circle; they (and evolution) are the unconscious benefactors of providence.

Is it any surprise that Christian Darwinians have fallen out with Dembski and friends and will have nothing to do with a concept of ID exclusively defined in anti-evolution terms? As Dembski says:

Ironically, theistic evolutionists now make common cause with atheistic evolutionists—specifically against ID. ID has become public enemy number one for both atheistic and theistic evolutionists (the recent spate of books by both sides confirms this point—atheist Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True as well as theist Kenneth Miller’s Only a Theory). Consequently, not just the mainstream academy but the mainstream Christian academy (Wheaton College, Calvin College, Seattle Pacific University, etc. — most schools in the CCCU) have now closed their doors to ID and to hiring faculty that explicitly support it.

Well surprise, surprise. Little wonder that mainstream Christian academies are closing their doors to the Christian right’s anti-evolutionist rendering of ID. Dembski and his right wing friends have cast the debate in the mold of a polarised ID vs. evolution battle thus effectively accusing those Christians who defect from the Christian right’s concept of ID as crypto-naturalists; a charge that is tantamount to an accusation of blasphemy. As I said over two years ago when I first started looking at this whole debate:

They frame the debate to look as though it is ‘naturalistic’ evolution vs. ‘supernatural’ creation by God with, of course, ID coming in on the side of God against those who, like myself, favour evolution. Ironically, many atheists would agree with this framing.

So it seems I have come full circle. How can Christian Darwinians do business with Dembski and friends when the innuendo is that those who do not support Dembski’s version of ID must be crypto-materialists who worship “a god of some sort”? I’m the first to admit that conventional evolution, as far as I am concerned, is only a working hypothesis, a hypothesis that may need considerable modification in the light of the Creator’s providence, but the unwarranted polarization superimposed by Dembski on the subject makes a relationship with the right wing Christian culture he represents impossible. As I said in my last post:

This ……. right wing reaction against evolution is now culturally locked into the contemporary ID movement to the extent that it is impossible for them to countenance “evilution” as one of the options by which divine intelligence may operate. The Christian right wants to undermine the atheist’s main support and therefore evolution must go at all costs.

Dembski echoes precisely this point when he says:

Christians in general need to consider this: The only thing theistic evolutionists have to say to a Richard Dawkins who uses evolution as a club to beat believers is that he’s making a category mistake, trying to get science to do the work of theology (to which Dawkins would respond “so much the worse for theology”). By contrast, ID takes the club out of Dawkins’ hands and breaks it, showing that the theory of evolution on which he relies is all washed up.

What neither Dembski nor Dawkins seems to have spotted is that that club may already have “ID” (or at least “Logical Hiatus”) written all over it.

Darwin Bicentenary: Final Summing up.

Bad Ben says "Evolution is a brilliant theory and Darwin was brilliant guy.” See here

My 2009 blog series on the Darwin bicentenary was, from the start, a pretext to ponder some aspects of the ID community’s challenge to evolution. I stress some because I confined myself to those issues I thought I understood best. I am hoping that this will be the last post on the matter, thus keeping my New Year resolution to stop blogging on this subject and to start thinking about something else.

In part 1 of this post I looked at those facets of the ID movement’s work I like best; in particular Dembski’s papers on active information and the very crucial challenge of irreducibly complexity. In this final part I will look at aspects I am less fond of. None of the following is to say that there is no case against evolution; it’s just that some areas of anti-evolutionist polemic are, in my view, technically inept. Most of the following points I have touched on in my series. They represent my personnel digest and impressions after nearly two years of contact with the anti-evolutionists on Uncommon Descent. It is therefore difficult to formally reference them against the movement’s work, so I’m taking a “if the hat fits, then wear it” approach here.


ONE) Misunderstanding the second law of thermodynamics: Some anti-evolutionists still hold the erroneous view that the second law of thermodynamics contradicts evolution. (See this post). This fallacy, I think, is mostly prevalent amongst Young Earth Creationists: It is a fallacy they have repeated to themselves time, time and again and in the repeating they have become entrenched. The loss of face in going back on this entrenched position is unendurable. To challenge this fallacy is to face a desperate antagonist who will cling to it for all he’s worth.

Entropy is defined as S = k Log Z, where Z is the statistical weight of a macrostate. The second law tells us that dS/dt > 0 for an isolated system. The equation for S alone ought to provide YECs with a big hint as to their error. Z is defined given the constraints of the laws of physics. Thus the quantity Z does not necessarily equate to our intuitive concept of disorder because conceivably the physical regime may so restrict possibilities that Z will include a relatively high proportion of states containing self-perpetuating complex ordered forms. Since physical laws transcend thermodynamic decay, our intuitive concept of what increasing Z entails may be completely awry.

TWO) “Chance and necessity”: Another misunderstanding I see perpetuated amongst the anti-evolutionists is embodied in their use of the phrase “chance and necessity”. They identify “Necessity” with the laws of physics. Hence, they conclude that since “Necessity” must have a probability of 1 then it follows that physical laws have a probability of 1. Therefore they wrongly conclude that the patterns generated by physical laws can’t contain information.

THREE) Conflating complexity with information: A very simple outcome with a very low probability will, by Dembski’s definition of information (-log [p]), have very high information content. But a more complex outcome with a high probability will contain less information than an improbable simple outcome. Ergo, the complexity of an outcome is not necessarily an indication of its information content; some anti-evolutionists seem confused about this distinction.

FOUR) Denial that living complexity could conceivably be implicit in simple laws: As a rule anti-evolutionists don’t give much credence to the idea that life is implicit in our physical regime – from their misleading “chance and necessity” perspective they regard it as impossible for the complex information of life to be implicit in physics. Given this belief it is surely ironic that one of their most effective challenges to evolution, that is, irreducible complexity, depends on a very complex object being entailed by physics: Irreducible complexity requires living structures to populate morphospace* as isolated islands of self perpetuating functionality. This conjectured evolution blocking pattern in morphospace is itself a very complex object, potentially containing lots of information. It is an object that would necessarily have to be implicit in the physics that many anti-evolutionists claim “cannot create information”. Thus, the important challenge of irreducible complexity depends on physics entailing a very complex object. If elementary physics is conjectured to imply an intricate pattern that blocks evolution, it would seem that those who tender the opposite conjecture of self-perpetuating functionality forming a connected set in morphospace is not a position that can be criticised on the basis that physics cannot “create” the information required by this object.


FIVE) The polarization of intelligence against evolution: The anti-evolutionists are apt to contrast intelligent agency with the “mindlessness” of evolution. But “intelligence” as we understand it in its human form at least, has a strong trial and error component suggesting that there are deep isomorphisms between evolution, intelligence and algorithmic searches. Moreover, it needs to be pointed out that human technological progress is only possible if “technological morphospace” is populated with functionality in such a way that it is possible for human intelligence to jump the gap from one technological development to the next; without this level of technological “reducible complexity” human technological advance is impossible.

SIX) Intelligence polarized against “naturalism”: Consider this statement which I once read somewhere on Uncommon Descent:

“The four fundamental forces must explain everything on earth if you don’t believe in intelligent design”

So; does it follow that if one does believe in Intelligent Design then one doesn’t believe that the four fundamental forces “explain everything”? No, the above sentence doesn’t actually say that, but it leaves unsaid whether or not the four fundamental forces also constitute a candidate manifestation of intelligent design. If the four forces do “explain life” they would presumably have to be correctly selected in order to make evolution work. The question is, then: Which requires more intelligence: Creating life directly or via the selection of the right laws? Given that many anti-evolutionists are theists, it is ironic that they should set "intelligence" over and against “naturalism” when in fact it is clear that any thoroughgoing Christian theism sees “naturalism” as sourced in divine designs. If the “natural” is divinely sourced then why don’t the anti-evolutionists at least acknowledge evolution as an intelligent design option (albeit one they disagree with)? These matter need to be clarified amongst anti-evolutionists.


SEVEN) Is “Intelligently Designed” the same as “Designed”? The use of the qualifier “Intelligent” may hint at the presence of a rather anthropomorphic valued judgment. I myself would prefer to just use the unqualified term “design” (or even “providence”) for two reasons:
1. “Design” is a more neutral term that can be used to designate the abstract notion that our descriptions of the ontology of the cosmos will always contain an irreducible Logical Hiatus; that is, an apparent contingent giveness will always remain whether we think it to be “intelligently” sourced or not.
2. It avoids the difficulties of trying to assess the motives and capabilities of a designer; for example assessing whether a work of art is intelligent is not so easy given that it is bound up with the artist’s motives, aims and personal complexes.
Perhaps a more objective measure of intelligence could be arrived at in terms of the computational complexity required to arrive at a configuration. In this connection I don’t find Dembski’s concept of complex specified information very helpful. (See here)


EIGHT) No acknowledgement of evolution as a possible design candidate:There are Christians such as Sir John Polkinghorne who believe evolution has occurred and yet who would claim that the propensity for the Universe to be so “fruitful” in evolutionary terms is down to God’s provision (or design). Ostensively, then, evolution too can be interpreted as a design candidate. Whether evolution has actually occurred is not the point here: One Uncommon Descent poster (See here) has acknowledged that genetic front loading is one way of explaining common descent. Although he himself doesn’t believe this has actually happened he allows such a view to be classified as a form of intelligent design. This act of classification raises the question why evolution itself, which as Dembski has shown must be necessarily be fueled by some kind of front loaded “active” information for it to work, can’t also be included in the ID fold!


NINE) Contemporary ID: A theory-less movement: I have criticized the anti-evolutionists on the basis that they have no agreed working theory of natural history: Their theories of natural history may range from Young Earth Creationism to a form of genetically front loaded evolution, as we have seen. Hence their scientific endeavors are largely guided by an anti-science heuristic – that is, one of seeking out the weaknesses in the academic establishment’s edifice of evolution. Actually, I might be prepared to withdraw this criticism given that positing the involvement of super intelligence naturally introduces an entity that could work in quite mysterious ways and thus be scientifically intractable. But then if that intelligence is so inscrutable perhaps conventional evolution, with its burden of implicit active information, is that entity’s chosen method of working. Who knows?


TEN) The politicization of science in a Christian right vs. atheist contention: Evolution has been portrayed by atheists as a process that from its inception to its conclusion is mindless, a process that in the words of Richard Dawkins allows him to become an intellectually satisfied atheist. Thus “evilution” has become the ogre of the Christian right, a rival to creation, an insentient chaos monster that purports to be able to create organized complexity from next to nothing. Evolution’s almost universal acceptance amongst left wing and liberal atheists only confirms to the Christian right that evolution can only ever be anti-intelligence and therefore anti-God. This consequent right wing reaction against evolution is now culturally locked into the contemporary ID movement to the extent that it is impossible for them to countenance “evilution” as one of the options by which divine intelligence may operate. The Christian right wants to undermine the atheist’s main support and therefore evolution must go at all costs. This anti-evolutionist opposition to the liberal academic establishment’s evolutionary world view also marries well with their opposition to that establishment’s views on global warming.

If evolution has occurred then it clearly keeps its load of active information well hidden, so much so that neither the anti-evolutionists nor militant atheists are aware of it; or perhaps they just don’t want to acknowledge it. In the opinion of both parties evolution purports to be a process that can boot strap living configurations from next to nothing. Thus anti-evolutionists and atheists have very large stakes in the respective presence or absence of explicit information discontinuities in nature; in contrast evolution’s information discontinuity is very implicit and is not to be found in material reifications, like front loaded genetic information.

The contemporary ID movement has fallen out badly with the evolutionists like Francis Collins and Ken Miller. Collins and Miller, like Polkinghorne, are theists and therefore they are very likely to attribute evolutionary fruitfulness to divine providence or design. So, why can’t Miller and Collins join forces with Uncommon Descent and their philosophical views on evolution be incorporated into a united ID front? In spite of at least one ID theorist allowing genetically front loaded common descent being identified as an ID candidate my guess is that this can never happen with conventional evolution even though it must also be a front loaded process. There are, I suspect, fundamental fault lines here bound up with political and vested interests making such a union impossible: The Christian right, the free market economists and those who are itching to identify President Obama as Mr. 666 may have something to do with it. It is beginning to look to me as if political identification counts for more than one’s belief in theism, Christianity, or even in intelligent design. According to her wiki page, Christian right winger Anne Coulter (pictured) has the following (tongue in cheek?) concept of the ideal world:

"It would look like New York City during the Republican National Convention. In fact, that's what I think heaven is going to look like."

I hope to scale the monumental irony introduced by the right wing connection on my blog Noumena, Cognita and Dreams.** (If there is any doubt about a right wing connection have a look at this post that has just popped up on Uncommon Descent)

Heavenly Body: Ann Coulter is
in Heaven whenever she goes
to a republican convention.






Footnotes
* I must make one thing clear here: Morphospace, in the sense that I use it, refers to both microscopic as well as macroscopic configuration.

** The intended post was in fact published on this blog: See here

The God Computation.

I was fascinated to read this post on Uncommon Descent by Barry Arrington. He gives us a link to an article claiming to have calculated that the probability of abiogenesis to be in the order of 10 to the power of -1018 (Presumably a “spontaneous” probability calculated without reference to the structure of morphospace). This figure, he says, has given some impetus to multiverse views because clearly only a multiverse can provide the probabilistic resources for the required “miracle” of spontaneous creation to take place. Barry then goes on to propose:

But the theist can play this game too. “The existence of God is not logically impossible. In an infinite number of universes everything that is not logically impossible is in fact instantiated, and we just happen to live in one of those universes in which God is instantiated”

Somebody in the comments thread takes Barry to task over the question of logical possibility: The multiverse, the correspondent says, doesn’t imply a carte blanche logical possibility because the multiverse itself is subject to laws (God knows what laws!). That comment seems true enough, but it reckons without Stephen Wolfram’s conjecture of computational equivalence: Viz: Any computation exceeding a certain threshold of complexity will, given enough time, exhibit computational universality – that is, it will compute any computable function and only God knows just what huge computations are out there in the platonic realm waiting to be reified as a real computation. So, if our multiverse is one of these universal computations it will, as it rings the changes of chaos, eventually come up with anything computationally possible. If, then, there is such a thing as a “god computation” or “god function” out there, somewhere sometime the multiverse will compute it! Therefore perhaps Barry Arrington’s point is valid after all!


The irony is that it seems that a multiverse theorist has already arrived at the very juncture anticipated by Arrington. I am thinking of the “computer simulation” argument. This argument tells us that in a multiverse there is a very high probability we are part of some kind of huge computer simulation initiated and controlled by a being or beings who as far as we humans are concerned would have the sort of powers over the simulation that we traditionally associate with deity. See here for details. I once commented on this matter myself here!

One version of the computer simulation theory suggests that it must be these guys who are simulating our universe.

Atheology

In this post atheist Larry Moran criticizes attempts to “prove God” (sic; how can we expect to “prove God” if Larry can’t even expect to “prove evolution”?) from the appearance of design. In his opinion life shows signs of not being designed: He is probably thinking of some of those biological structures that look as though they have been cobbled together as a result of the accumulation of historical accidents. The end product is the kind of legacy architecture one sees in old towns where the next development is constrained by and has to work from the fiat of what has gone before. (If you ask Larry he could probably reel off a whole list of biological examples) In Larry Moran’s mind this concept of haphazard accumulative development is set against the notion of the intelligent planner who starts from a blank sheet and can therefore design a much more direct solution to a problem, a solution unencumbered by past random legacies.

There is, needless to say, a hidden counterfactual theology in the atheism here; namely the assumption that God is a kind of technical whiz who sits down like a human engineer with a virgin drawing board in front of Him and designs his best solutions. (Ironically many anti-evolutionists conceive a similar concept of designer). But perhaps God is a story teller first and an engineer second? Clearly ours is a story, a cosmic story of change, evolution and contingency snatched from the platonic limbo land of possibility, that can and has been told. Perhaps like a human author Deity has sat down not in front of the engineer’s drawing board, but rather in an armchair beside a fire and told our story. If God is God, infinite and inscrutable, how can we be so sure (and naïve) about His motives?

But whatever; at the end of the day we are always left with the Logical Hiatus of having something for nothing; why is there something rather than nothing? Where, if it exists, is the logical necessity to support the apparent contingency of our cosmos? So, in a more abstract sense than we find in the engineering metaphor we seem to have a design question, a question of, as Paul Davies puts it in the “Cosmic Jackpot”: Why this universe and not another? Is it all just random? But what is randomness other than a mathematical description of a particular class of pattern, a pattern that creaks under a huge burden of complex brute contingency. The big question then is who or what sources such complex patterns? Or is the source a hidden ontology that somehow reifies our notion of “chance” in the sense of being a source that can make choices mindlessly?* But to envisage such a source of mindless purposelessness working behind a facade of pattern is itself a perverse kind of theology; an “atheology” that makes the ontology of chance into a god and stultifies further questions because it believes there is neither point nor meaning in asking them. This is the theology of the absurdity of it all.

Footnote
* What does it mean to make choices without mind? It can’t be randomness because randomness is to do with pattern description and as such makes no necessary allusion to the mechanism of “choice” that sources the pattern. As human minds we can only empathize with mind as the source of choice, so it seems that an ontology of mindless “chance choices” is forever utterly beyond our understanding; we can no more understand what it is like to be a mindless “chance source” than we can understand what it is like to be an ant.

Thermodynamics and Evolution – Again.

Is the relative statistical weight of life containing states great enough at some point in the history of the universe to give those states a realistic probability?

(See also http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2009/05/darwin-bicentenary-part-20-does.html)

Whether or not abiogenesis and evolution are facts, there is one argument that the anti-evolution ID theorists are ill-advised to use: The argument that abiogenesis and evolution violate the second law of thermodynamics. In two posts on Uncommon Descent (here and here) we find Granville Sewell still publicizing this erroneous view. The line of argument used by Sewell is based on the observation that a local increase in order can only occur if negative entropy is transmitted across the boundary of a locality into a system (that’s the equivalent of saying positive entropy is exported out of the system). Sewell identifies this negative entropy (or “negentropy”) with the input of information across the boundary of the system. Therefore in his opinion it follows that some kind of information must be injected into the subsystem from without if the ordered structures of life have any chance of coming into existence. Ergo, since abiogenesis and evolution make no recourse to the input of information (or negentropy) beyond the confines of the Earth it follows that thermodynamics prohibits the formation of organic structures.


The observation that local increases in order must be accompanied by the transmission of negentropy into the locality is, of course, correct, but Sewell seems to hold the erroneous view that this negentropy must be reified as explicit information crossing the boundary into that locality. In Sewell's view this explicit information is the only way of offsetting the extremely small probabilities associated with organic structures. He rightly observers that at the bottom of the second law are probabilities, but he neglects to say that these probabilities are conditional probabilities. True, living structures are such a tiny class of what is possible that it is clear they have a negligible absolute probability of formation. But in reality the development of living things is a conditional probability, a probability conditioned on the given physical regime of the cosmos. Given this regime here is the big question: Is the conditional probability of evolution and abiogenist raised to realistic levels by physical conditions alone? If so then the “information cost” of this high conditional probability must reside in the improbability of the physical regime that supports abiogenesis and evolution.

Now consider two scenarios:

ONE) Firstly crystallization. Speaking in absolute terms probabilities favour crystallization even less than they do biological structures; with respect to the huge mathematical space of platonic configurational possibility the high organization of crystals is very a unrepresentative arrangement of particles; the low statistical weight of crystal configurations, a lot lower, in fact, than even the statistical weight of living structures (which can be realized in enumerable ways) ensures that crystals have a very low absolute probability. However, in real physical terms the relatively tiny statistical weight of the class of crystals is more than compensated for by the constraint imposed by the laws of physics, a constraint which eliminates huge numbers of cases, thus considerably raising the conditional probability of crystallization. For under the right physical conditions crystals easily form: A solution with the right concentration, temperature and pressure results in a bit by bit construction of the crystal as atoms randomly find their place in the crystal lattice and are fixed into position. This considerable increase in local order is offset by the appropriate entropy transactions with the surroundings, thus preserving the overall upward trend in entropy.


There is one important remark about crystallisation that I would want to make here. As I have just said entropy is exported out of the crystal locality thus preserving the second law. Another way of looking at this is to think of negentropy crossing over into the locality, increasing the order of this locality. But in fact if we look at the boundary of the locality closely we find nothing resembling the import across this boundary of instructions telling the atoms how to assemble; the assembly is inherent in the information contained in the laws of physics which constrain the locality sufficiently to render an absolutely improbable configuration very probable.

TWO) Now consider the case of a seed landing in a locality and a plant consequently growing. The growth of the plant constitutes a local increase in order. As in the case of crystallization this local increase in order is offset by the appropriate entropy transactions with the surroundings thus preserving an overall upward trend in entropy. However, this system is very different from crystallization on two counts. Firstly, the plant is not a manifestation of simple order like a crystal; it is of course very ordered but it is a very complex form of order at the same time. Secondly, the elementary entropy transactions with the surroundings are not the only thing that crosses the boundary of the locality: From the outset there is the input of a seed which is a very complex piece of genetic machinery and information. Thus, this system is very much in line with Sewell’s expectation that the locality needs some fundamental informational input before a highly ordered yet very complex structure can be constructed.

****

We have above then two scenarios where there is a local increase in order and yet no violation of the second law of thermodynamics. Both systems represent a generalized form of “crystallisation” in the sense that an ordered structure is built up atom by atom, molecule by molecule, as randomly jiggling particles find a place in the structure and then are locked into place. But, of course, there are obvious differences between these two forms of “crystallization”. For mineral crystallization the “information” present in the local laws of physics is sufficient to “instruct” the process, whereas for the “crystallization” of a living structure the complex machinery in the seed packet is needed. For mineral crystallization the very regular and simple order of the crystal is in absolute terms highly improbable, but that improbability need only be bought at the price of a relatively elementary set of physical equations; a scenario that presents no obvious intuitive problem to us. On the other hand the growth of complex flora requires the laws of physics to be supplemented by the input of the complex structure found in a seed; once again a scenario that presents no serious intuitive problems for us.


In terms of absolute probabilities both mineral crystallization and the growth of an organism (in this case a plant) represent the appearance of highly improbable structures. But in terms of conditional probabilities both processes have high probabilities; for mineral crystallization a high conditional probability is bought at the price of the laws of physics and the given boundary conditions of the physical system. In the case of plant life the boundary conditions are supplemented by the complex seed packet that boot straps the growth of an organism. Taken together the laws of physics and the boundary conditions of these two systems have the effect of putting a very tight constraint on their respective systems, so tight in fact that in spite of the general trend of an overall increase in disorder there is a high (conditional) probability of a very unrepresentative, albeit localized, configuration making an appearance. The constraints on the systems have the effect of removing myriad mathematically possible scenarios so that amongst the remaining class of possibility, the statistical weight associated with the development of localised order is relatively high, thus considerably enhancing the probability of the formation of that local order.


So given these two scenarios, is it at least conceivable that some combination of abiogenesis and evolution can result in the “crystallization” (metaphorically speaking) of living things and yet not violate the second law of thermodynamics? The trouble is that neither of the above two scenarios do exactly what is required of abiogenesis and evolution: Although mineral crystallization only buys order from the laws of physics and simple boundary conditions, the result is a very bland and dead form of order. In contrast the “crystallization” of actual living things, in all cases we observe, supplements the laws of physics with a complex boundary condition in the form of the input of an intricate genetic machine needed to seed the formation of life. If the concept of evolution and abiogenesis are to work as conventionally envisaged then they must work less like the concept of seed growth, and more like crystal growth, where the only information resources are some simple boundary conditions and the laws of physics. The question then is this: Can life originate without the boundary condition of an initial input of complex informational machinery? Can we get ordered complexity from simple laws and algorithms?

If evolution and abiogenesis are the source of living complexity and diversity then on current theories they are a form of generalised “crystallization” resourced only by the inherent information present in some simple starting conditions and the laws of physics. It is this contention that sticks in the gullet of the anti-evolutionists; they do not believe that such is possible. Those anti-evolutionists who have followed the work of William Dembski have conflated Dembski’s otherwise valid conservation of information argument with a conservation of complexity and concluded that the complexity of life can’t come from simplicity. In contrast I hardly need point out that the militant atheists love the idea of complexity coming from simplicity, perhaps for two reasons: 1. The origin of life is then apparently sourced in “mindless simplicity” 2. The notion of complexity coming from simplicity can be extended and with a bit of imagination it might be mooted that complexity can come from simply nothing! Although the idea of getting something for nothing is very suspect it is not true that only complexity comes from complexity; as I have remarked many times in this blog, simple algorithms and laws can generate complexity, but the big question is: Can they generate living complexity?


Crystallisation works because each stage in the crystal’s formation is a stable structure; if the current crystal contains N atoms and is stable, then so is the next crystal structure of N+1 atoms and so on in an inductive way. Each structure in this succession of structures is only separated by an atom or two and thus they effectively form a connected set of stable structures in morphospace; in other words crystals are reducibly complex. This connected object in morphospace is an implication of the laws of physics. These laws act as a constraint removing such an immense class of random possibilities that relative to this much reduced class the statistical weight of an outcome containing crystals is considerably raised. The second law of thermodynamics is an outcome of random thermal agitations ensuring that a system migrates towards macro states with the greatest number of microstates (that is, macro states with the greatest statistical weight); if because of the constraint of physics the macro states with the greatest statistical weight contain localized order then that localized order will actually be favoured. Thus crystal formation does not violate the second law of thermodynamics because the laws of physics eliminate so many mathematically possible micro states, that as the system moves toward the macro state with the greatest statistical weight, it moves toward a system that includes local ordering.

Conventional abiogenesis and evolution do not assume the input of explicit information; rather the information is conjectured to be implicit in the laws of physics. Therefore the theoretical precondition of these processes is similar to that required by crystal formation; namely, a connected set of stable bio-structures in morphospace separated by gaps small enough to be jumped by random thermal agitation and/or random mutations; that is, the theoretical precondition for the “crystallization” of life is that bio-structures are reducibly complex. As for crystal formation this kind of evolution/abiogenesis does not violate the second law of thermodynamics because the physical regime is conjectured to eliminate so many mathematically possible micro states that scenarios where there is a local increase in order occupy a considerably larger relative proportion of the now constricted space of possibilities, thereby much enhancing their probability. If at this point it seems intuitively unlikely that the second law of thermodynamics would allow the formation of such complex ordered structures, we now recall the growth of a plant from a seed: Clearly thermodynamics does not prohibit the growth of a complex organism. As for crystal growth so it is for organic growth: The twin physical constraints of boundary conditions and the laws of physics eliminate so many mathematically possible micro states that the local increase in order entailed by organic growth becomes a considerably larger relative proportion of the now constricted space of possibilities, thereby much enhancing its probability. However, it is clear that plant growth depends on the boundary condition of the initial input of organized complexity in the form of a seed: But then abiogenesis and evolution also depend on an initial input of complexity; namely, a complex arrangement in morphospace whereby stable structures form a connected set, a structure that would have to be entailed by the laws of physics. This arrangement in morphospace serves a similar purpose to the complex genetic mechanisms found in a seed. This invisible mathematical structure (if it exists) tends to confound the anti-evolutionist’s expectation that the information needed to assemble complex objects can only be found reified in complex material objects.


I must qualify the foregoing by admitting that it not at all clear that the conjectured structures in morphospace required by evolution and abiogenesis actually exist, or even can exist. Moreover, it is not at all clear that the laws of physics, as we currently understand them, imply that biological structures are reducibly complex. The anti-evolutionist’s contention that biological structures are in fact irreducibly complex may still be true. But the point I’m making here concerns the second law of thermodynamics and not (ir)reducible complexity. That point is this: If biological morphospace is populated by a set of reducibly complex stable structures (that is structures separated by small increments of change) then as in crystal formation abiogenesis and evolution would not violate the second law. Moreover, the “crystallization” of life would require no explicit information directing the process to pass through the boundary of an evolving locality in order to seed it. The information required for life would, on this conjecture, be implicit in the laws of physics in as much as that those laws entail the required arrangements in morphospace.

That simple laws of physics are information laden and can potentially define something as complex as the arrangement of structures in morphospace is another concept that anti-evolutionists may find difficult accept. As I have remarked before anti-evolutionist’s often wrongly identify simple laws and algorithms with “necessity” and thus they wrongly conclude that equations can’t carry information. Moreover they tend to conflate the concepts of complexity and information. Thus they conclude that simple algorithms and laws can’t generate complexity – this is, of course, wrong as we know that simple algorithms can generate the complexity of fractals and pseudo random sequences. Even if we concede that the anti-evolutionists are right about the irreducible complexity of bio-morphs, one thing remains clear: Whether the layout in bio-morphospace entails either reducible complexity or irreducible complexity it is clear that this space of structures is itself an extremely complex object: therefore either way the physics of our world entails a morphospace with a very complex layout. So even taking on board the anti-evolutionist’s concept of irreducible complexity we find that we have to admit that simple physical laws can generate very complex objects, whether those objects favour or block evolution!

Although it is clear that Granville Sewell’s opinion about the second law of thermodynamics are wrong I would want to concede that abiogeneiss and evolution are subject to a reasonable doubt on basis that as far as I am concerned the questions surrounding (ir)reducible complexity are not settled in my mind. It’s a good thing that I’m not a professional scientist because even this expressed uncertainty is likely to be regarded as the slippery slope to the "scientific heresy" of ID. But as I have remarked before, whatever the arrangement of biological structures in morphospace may be, I have a funny feeling that this arrangement is computationally irreducible; that is, the only way we have of acquiring analytical evidence about that arrangement is to actually carry out a very long computation and there are no other analytical short cuts. Hence, the burden of evidence is thrown back on the actual computation itself; in this case the actual workings of natural prehistory as manifested by the existence or nonexistence of paleontological evidence. If my mathematical intuitions are right then as I am not a paleontologist it doesn’t look as though I can make much further progress on this subject.

Fuzzy after dinner thoughts one quiet Sunday afternoon.

Brave Knight Sir Roger Penrose doesn’t know which way his Hilbert space vector is going to point next

I am hoping to kick this habit of evolution vs. anti-evilution debate posting, an activity that I have engaged in for nearly two years now: I honestly don’t think I can make much further useful progress on the question. So, I plan to make only two more posts on the debate in order to wind it up. My mind is now turning (back) to other issues.

With the authoritative and excellent help of Sir Roger Penrose’s books I have been pondering the vexed question of the evolution (“evolution” as in “change”, not as in “evilution”) of the quantum mechanical state vector. The following is a resume of my current thinking so far, thinking which I have to admit is rather at the impressionistic sketch stage. (There is no guarantee as to the correctness of the following; after all I’m not a “Sir”. Also, today was one of those days when, as H. G. Wells put it in "The Time Machine", I was experiencing "that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere, when thought runs gracefully free of the trammels of precision")

The orientation of the QM state vector in Hilbert space changes in a smooth and deterministic way until a measuring system from without hits that vector and it then appears to undergo a random discontinuous jump according to probabilities calculated with the “projection hypothesis”. Ostensibly, Hilbert space is Mathematically Isotropic. Moreover, there seems to be a complementary symmetry between position and momentum (or time and energy) and this symmetry is especially clear with relativistic renditions of quantum mechanics. So given these symmetries, on the face of it there seems be no reason why we shouldn’t observe those strange mixtures of state that involve macroscopic objects occupying two positions at once, much as do photons in Young’s slits experiment; for given the isotropy of Hilbert space obviously spatially mixed macroscopic states are no less preferred than spatially unmixed states.

It has to be admitted that decoherence theory may provide an excellent solution to this problem. Entanglement with “hot” macroscopic measuring tools will appear to collapse the wavefunction. Furthermore, thermodynamics and entanglement will ensure that for macroscopic objects some balance between a spread of momenta and distances is maintained, and this perhaps is precisely what we see in the seemingly unambiguous states of the macroscopic world. Decoherence theory still remains a very good candidate explaining the apparent random jumping of the state vector and the preference for certain kinds of macro-state. The big bonuses of this theory are that it preserves frame independence, other symmetries and above all that holy grail of reductionist science: An “in principle” determinism – the closed system. However, it has to be said that at the level of the outermost frame there are no outside “hot” measuring contexts which will help maintain the state vector in some balance between momentum and position.

For reasons I have given here, I am inclined to favour the notion of real discontinuous random jumps in the state vector. Moreover, that the Schrödinger equation is not Lorentz invariant may hint that there is an actual asymmetry between space and momentum. In fact my own attempt at explaining gravity depends on a non-linear quantum equation that makes use of postulated underlying asymmetries in frame that are only partially compensated for by Einstein relativity. Gravity is something that operates in x-space and not in momentum space; hence there is an asymmetry between space and momentum. Thus gravity is implicated as a factor explaining why we only observe spatially unambiguous macro states. Penrose’s ideas about why the state vector jumps randomly may be right: It may jump to ensure that we don’t get quantum superpositions which imply spatially ambiguous macroscopic distributions of matter entailing gravitational energy divergences violating the allowed uncertainty in energy. Such a view entails the end of the reductionist's closed system.

Trouble Hunter

Characters of the wild web No 19: Cornelius Hunter trouble shoots evolution. But if you succeed in shooting down evolution, what have you got left?

If you are looking for interesting and robust challenges to conventional evolution Cornelius Hunter is the man to see.

In in this post he raises a subtle point regarding the philosophy of science: Just what is Methodological Naturalism? Cutting a long story short it seems that there are implicit self referencing problems in the concept. If we claim to be methodological naturalists we are presumably restricting ourselves to a particular epistemological method. But an epistemology only works given, a-priori, a particular model of ontology. Thus to use a particular epistemological method successfully we require a particular kind of underlying ontology to support it. The question then naturally arises: Can we use methodological naturalism as an epistemic method to check for the existence of an ontology that favours that method? That is, can we use methodological naturalism to validate methodological naturalism? But if we attempt this then we are, (as Hunter points out) carrying out the investigation because we don’t know in advance what the answer to this question is. But in that case methodological naturalism could, for all we know, be based on a false concept of ontology. If methodological naturalism is based on a false ontology, how then can we rely on it to return a reliable answer about itself? Seemingly, then, there is an impasse here whose only solution is to hope that the methods we are using come up trumps in kind of self-affirming feedback cycle. Does this amount to a kind of gambler’s winning streak, a faith even?

This post from Hunter is more a direct challenge to evolution. He remarks on the sophistication of flowering plants’ defense systems against bug infestation, and then goes on to ponder the possible evolutionary scenario. He thinks, however, not just about the “winning” path of change that has lead to the final system but the myriad failed trials en-route:

And of course these designs are observed by us only because they were the evolutionary winners. They are the proverbial tip of the iceberg. For every winner there are untold myriad losers. The designs that produced some other chemical rather than benzyl acetone. The designs that detected chemicals that the caterpillars don't secret. The designs that didn't couple with the detection system. The designs that produced secretions that had no effect on the caterpillars. The designs that wreaked havoc on the flowering process rather than merely altering the flowering time. And so on, and so forth. The plant must have been a veritable idea factory, churning out all manner of mostly useless Rube Goldberg devices.

This line of thought can be applied in general: Every organic structure we see has, according to conventional evolution, come at the expense of a myriad failed “experiments” along the way; the structural dead ends, the routes that go nowhere are many, perhaps just too many for the random agitations of thermodynamic diffusion to successfully explore and give us a successful result in “polynomial” time. Although, this is a hand waving argument, it nevertheless comes over with intuitively compelling force and it is one that is worth pondering in relation to every organic structure we see. Hunter is right to bring it to our attention: It is not at all clear that physics applies enough constraint on morphospace to prevent the thermodynamic “search algorithm” being exponentially swamped by too many dead end structures; in other words the pathways linking a reducibly complex set of structures in morphospace may be far too “thin” to be probable routes of change. Or perhaps the morphospace of our physical regime may not even be populated by a reducibly complex set of stable/self perpetuating structures.

But as is often the case with the anti-evolution ID theorists they are open to the criticism of only being negative: Cornelius Hunter’s blog largely deals in anti-theory; he is an anti-theorist; that is, his main aim is to shoot down evolution, but as far as I can tell he provides no alternative history of origins that in turn can be shot down by a stalking assassin.

Evolutionists: What do they aim at if they've got no targets?

Up Front Front Loading

Spot the front loading is this theory.

This post on Uncommon Descent has proved interesting. Below I’ve quoted parts of it and added my own comments:


I have argued before that the core of ID is not about a specific theory of origins. In fact, many ID’ers hold a variety of views including Progressive Creationism and Young-Earth Creationism.

Comment: I understand the above to mean that in the poster’s opinion ID concerns not a history of origins but the ultimate source of information (which is identified with intelligence). Well, I suppose somebody from the anti-evolution ID community would have to say this because, as we know, there is little consensus amongst them on the course of natural history: There’s a lot of difference between an Old Earth theory of common descent and Young Earth Creationism. In fact as far as an account of natural history is concerned those ID theorists who believe in an Old Earth and common descent are closer to standard evolutionists than they are to YECs! But presumably this UD poster regards belief in the ultimate cause of life a more important category marker than which story of natural history one believes. But at UD the ironies and paradoxes abound: In this post I comment on a UD post by William Dembski where he appears to distance himself from the YEC community.

But another category that is often overlooked are those who hold to both ID and Common Descent, where the descent was purely naturalistic. This view is often considered inconsistent. My goal is to show how this is a consistent proposition.

Comment: The author then goes onto to consider a form of genetic “front loading” as evidence of the work of intelligent agency in the history of life. As this front loaded genetic information is implemented by life at different junctures in prehistory it results in a bifurcating tree of common descent. (Although the author is careful to state that he himself does not hold this view)


Behe’s actual view, as I understand it, actually pushes the origin of information back further. Behe believes that the information came from the original arrangement of matter in the Big Bang.

Comment: That’s what you might call the ultimate "up front" front loading into matter. Notice a habit of mind in operation here: It is taken it for granted that front loaded “information” will be reified in a complex arrangement of matter; in this case the arrangement is envisaged to be implicit in the arrangement of matter in the “cosmic egg” of the Big Bang; it’s either that and/or a given arrangement of atoms in a very large genome.

And, as hopefully has been evident from this post, the mode of evolution from an information-rich starting point (ID) is quite different from that of an information-poor starting point (neo-Darwinism).


Comment: This is where he goes wrong in my view: One can analyze neo-Darwinism in the same counterfactual way that this UD poster is considering genetic (an even Big Bang) front loading and thus come to the conclusion that if neo-Darwinism has happened then it can only have done so because of an information rich front loading; in this case the front loading would be found in a reducibly complex arrangement of structures in morphospace (See my last post). Ergo, a working conventional neo-Darwinism becomes just as much a form of front loaded ID as genetic front loading. The reason why it is difficult to spot “Darwinism” as a front loaded system is that the information has no material reification in the form of an arrangement of “solid matter”; instead it is to be found in the platonic realm of morphospace.

In Darwinism, each feature is a selected accident.

Comment: “A selected accident” – precisely; something is doing the “selecting” and that something is the “information source” and that information source is found in the arrangement of morphospace. However, that arrangement would have to be implicit in the laws of physics. But I suspect that the anti-evolution community would take exception to that suggestion because they have a low view of the complexity generating powers of algorithms and laws. (Note: I said “complexity generating powers” and NOT “Information generating powers”)


I think that agency is a distinct form of causation from chance and law. That is, things can be done with intention and creativity which could not be done in complete absence of those two.

Comment: “Chance and Law”; well that’s a step in the right direction – it’s much better than “chance and necessity”, although I think “Law and Disorder” is even better. Yes I agree that the a-priori complexity of intention and creativity can reach solutions that are practically unreachable to law and disorder. However if this UD poster is a theist why would he want to draw a sharp distinction between agency (=Divine Intelligence) and “chance and law”? If he is a theist then wouldn’t he believe that “chance and law” are ultimately sourced in divine agency and thus the ultimate cause of all that chance and law generate is to be found in that agency? Aren't "chance and law" a theory of origins rather than an ultimate cause? Is he underestimating what divine intelligence, the ultimate cause, can achieve through law and disorder? In my view “chance and law” are a description of the status quo, a theory of origins, and as such they are not causes in and of themselves.


Final Comments:

1. As I have remarked before the anti-evolution ID community seem confused about the difference between information and complexity: They expect high information objects to be complex (That need not be the case as I have already suggested in previous posts) and therefore the mantra that “you can’t create information” translates to “you can’t create organized complexity”. This is why they don’t believe in evolution and abiogenesis; to work, these processes are required to create organized complexity and therefore in the anti-evolutionist’s mind they must be creating information which of course they can't do.

2. If I am right in suggesting that common or garden evolution could equally be mooted as an ID candidate then this means that the span of possible ID theories ranges from YEC theory, through genetic front loading to neo Darwinism! However, it is likely that the anti-evolution ID community will resist this conclusion: Given all the name calling that has been traded between anti-evolutionists and the evolutionists it is simply impossible for the anti-evolution community to call a moratorium on bog standard evolution on the basis that it can be mooted (albeit counterfactually) as an ID candidate because they would lose face and become a laughing stock. Moreover the anti-evolution community has committed itself to portraying bog-standard evolution as a “natural” process that pretends to be able to create information and thereby the seat of a godless lie. In the mind of the anti-evolutionists the “natural forces” of evolution are set over and against Divine Agency. Hence they don’t see just one “prime mover” but a trinity of causal candidates: God, chance and necessity with the latter two as upstart pretenders. No doubt if pressed they would confess that “chance and necessity” are also down to the Divine Mind. But “chance and necessity” has become blighted by a close association with atheism and is seen as a tool of an atheist conspiracy, to be resisted at all costs. I’m reminded somewhat of the fact that acceptance of the Gregorian calendar was at first resisted in England; it was too closely associated with the papacy to be immediately acceptable.

Darwin Bicentenary: Summing up Part 1.

Now that the Darwin Bicentenary year has passed and I have worked through 30 parts of this series re evolution and Intelligent Design, I thought it time to take stock of progress, if any at all.

In such a wide interdisciplinary subject as evolution I decided to considerably restrict my terms of reference, and so I have merely nibbled at one small corner of the subject. I have largely focused on two areas, both of which are very important to Intelligent Design, and which are also in line with my particular experience and interests; namely, the second law of thermodynamics and the irreducible/reducible complexity question. Moreover, the anti-evolution ID community seems to think that these two areas contain killer arguments against evolution. Whilst it may be true that some other quirk of chemistry, physics and mathematics makes evolution impossible I find that neither of these subject areas provides unequivocal objections against evolution.

Firstly let me briefly explain my position on Intelligent Design. What I call “Elementalist” explanations will, I suggest, never arrive at self-explanation (i.e asiety). Elementalist explanations describe the cosmos using increasingly compact equations and algorithms. Barring the use of “Turtles all the way down” regresses this type of explanation ultimately leads to an irreducible core of data and logic that can undergo no further explanatory compression and therefore results in a logical hiatus. These compacted explanatory/descriptive objects are too simple to hold out the prospect of providing “self explanation”. My guess then, for what it is worth, is that we must look to a-priori infinite complexity for ultimate explanations. It may be that this “infinitely complex something” which has “chosen” and given us our particular physical regime is utterly insentient and impersonal,* but for me this opens the way for a consideration of the complexities of theism and therefore of Intelligent Design. I must add, however, that this is no argument which can or should be used to pressure atheists into belief. As a pathway to theism it is my own particular pilgrimage and I am not necessarily expecting anyone to follow or think worse of them if they don’t.

That I am in one sense in the ID camp means that I must carefully distinguish myself from the ID community represented by, say, Uncommon Descent. For reasons of their own they are vociferous in their anti-evolutionism and therefore I refer to them as the “anti-evolution community”, in order to distinguish them from my own position. In fact during UD’s watch the ID debate has become a de facto ID vs. evolution debate and has become so polarized that many perceive Intelligent Design as necessarily anti-evolutionist and vice versa.

None of this is to say I have any emotional commitment to evolution; for me evolution is like a piece of conceptual engineering that I have on my bench and is proving to be a worthwhile study. As I have often maintained, to create a form of evolution that works seems to require as much a feat of engineering design than otherwise less implicit creative dispensations. Thus, the bear idea of Intelligent Design is not sufficient to rule out evolution as a design option. Set against this view is the anti-evolution community’s implicit depiction of evolution as a kind of primeval and elemental Chaos Monster, an upstart pretender from the abyssal deep incapable of competing with the real Divine Creator. Thus by implication those who merely court evolution (like myself) may be in danger of being accused of inadvertently conniving with a Satanic conspiracy against the living God, thus assisting the cause of a demiurge that pretends to able to create but in reality is a evil fraud.

However, be that as it may, in this particular post I want to focus on the positive and stimulating aspects of the anti-evolution community, aspects that I have focused on over the last year or so:


ONE) For me, one the best parts of the anti-evolution community’s work is that of William Dembski’s papers on information conservation. This work, as far as I can tell, is sound, and is in line with my own understanding that whatever way one cuts the cloth our cosmos has to be “paid for” either by very improbable preconditions or an enormous (and very speculative) multiverse. It echoes my understanding that our current mathematics/science will always face an ultimate “in principle” logical hiatus. Logical necessity has a probability of 1 and thus has zero information content, but it seems that our scientific logic will never find necessity and thus will always be information laden with contingency; an apparent “free lunch” from who knows where. Dembski refers to this as “active information”. But I must remark here that it seems that Dembski’s work is not an attack on evolution per se. In fact in a UD post Dembski described one of his books as not inconsistent with theistic evolution. (See this post for more details). In short Dembski’s work tells us that if evolution has happened then it can only happen with the right burden of active information on board: Evolution or no evolution, both require what to the theist looks like a design choice. Thus a theist cannot write off evolution on the basis that it pretends to create information out of some “know nothing” primeval elemental and “natural” force. In the final analysis the information content of evolutionary processes are as much an unjustified “front loaded” free lunch as that provided by the magician God of Young Earth Creationism who uses magic words to “speak the world into existence”.

TWO) My acceptance of Dembski’s work has to be qualified: As we trace the source of life back through a sequence of highly improbable mathematical preconditions we eventually come up against a logical hiatus where a particular set of contingent conditions are taken as brute givens. What space of possibility are we to use to assign probabilities to these source conditions? In fact, since relative to our knowledge these conditions are givens there is then no ontological space known to us from which these conditions have been selected by a higher process. Thus, is it meaningful and intelligible to assign probabilities to these conditions if we know nothing of the process that has created them? Of course, these conditions can be viewed as a selection taken from a platonic space of mathematical possibility and thus a probability be assigned them using Bernoulli’s principle of insufficient reason. This is in fact Dembski’s practice. I’m inclined to accept this practice, but not without reservation.

THREE) Irreducible complexity is a key concept used by the anti-evolution ID movement as a killer challenge to evolution. I myself regard it as an objection of intermediate strength rather than unequivocal. Evolution and abiogenesis require stable structures to be linked into a connected set of incrementally separated structures allowing thermodynamic agitations to cause diffusion from one structure to the next; this is what I mean by “reducible complexity”.** But it is very difficult to decide between irreducible and reducible complexity on an empirical basis; in particular if evolution is computationally irreducible and the fossil record sparse. Methodological arguments as to which side of the debate the scientific onus falls to empirically decide the case may be mooted. But in absolute terms it is difficult to be sure one way or the other; one man’s “best explanation” methodology may be another man’s bigotry. One thing, however, we can be sure of is that evolution and abiogenesis can’t proceed without reducible complexity. Hence, the question of reducible or irreducible complexity is very important to both sides of the debate. The anti-evolution community is right to stress it, but for me the case for irreducible complexity is not without reasonable doubt.


So having summed up what I think of as the best aspects of the anti-evolution movement, in my next summing up post I will consider what I believe to be its worst aspects.



* I must qualify this by saying that I am inclining towards the opinion that the idea of a cosmos without sentience and perception is unintelligible

** "Reducible complexity" is, in fact, one means by which an evolutionary process can be "front loaded" with Dembski's active information.

Darwin Bicententary Part 30: The Mystery of Life’s Origin, Chapter 9

Continuing my consideration of the three online chapters of Thaxton, Bradley and Olsen’s book “The Mystery of Life’s Origin

Absence of Evidence…

In chapter 9 of the Mystery of Life’s origin Thaxton, Bradley & Olsen start by expressing the essential mystery of life’s origin:

In Chapter 7 we saw that the work necessary to polymerize DNA and protein molecules from simple biomonomers could potentially be accomplished by energy flow through the system. Still, we know that such energy flow is a necessary but not sufficient condition for polymerization of the macromolecules of life. Arranging a pile of bricks into the configuration of a house requires work. One would hardly expect to accomplish this work with dynamite, however. Not only must energy flow through the system, it must be coupled in some specific way to the work to be done.

What TB&O are saying here is that although the energy required to carry out the work of organizing atomic and molecular units into a living configuration may be available, that energy in itself is useless without some kind of information engine directing how it is to be used. An analogous situation arises if one has a large work force of men; this work force is all but useless unless they have the information on how to act.

In chapter 9 TB&O look at the crucial question of abiogenesis; that is, the question of whether disorganized elemental matter has the wherewithal to organize itself into complex living structures. They consider a variety of proposed mechanisms: Pure chance, natural selection, self ordering tendencies in matter, mineral catalysis, non-linearity in systems far from equilibrium and the direct production of proteins and DNA. Needless to say they are of the opinion that at the time of writing no substantive model of abiogenesis exists. I am not aware that the situation has improved substantially in favour of abiogenesis since TB&O’s book was written in the mid eighties.

TB&O’s main point comes out very clearly when they consider experimental attempts to directly form polypeptides. TB&O believe that most theories of abiogenesis founder in one important respect: Whilst they accept that under the right disequilibrium conditions organic polymers can be synthesised, they point out that these polymers are randomly configured, and thus by implication contain no useful information content. In TB&O’s opinion the chief challenge to theories of abiogenesis is the question of what supplies the necessary “configurational entropy work”. In their words:

Virtually no mechanism with any promise for coupling the random flow of energy through the system to do this very specific work has come to light. .

TB&O tender experimental results which suggest that the formation of polypeptides shows no bias in the frequency of connections:

The polymerization of protein is hypothesized to be a nonrandom process, the coding of the protein resulting from differences in the chemical bonding forces. For example, if amino acids A and B react chemically with one another more readily than with amino acids C, D, and E, we should expect to see a greater frequency of AB peptide bonds in protein than AC, AD, AE, or BC, BD, BE bonds.

Furthermore, the peptide bond frequencies for the twenty-five proteins approach a distribution predicted by random statistics rather than the dipeptide bond frequency measured by Steinman and Cole. This observation means that bonding preferences between various amino acids play no significant role in coding protein. Finally, if chemical bonding forces were influential in amino acid sequencing, one would expect to get a single sequence (as in ice crystals) or no more than a few sequences, instead of the large variety we observe in living systems. Yockey, with a different analysis, comes to essentially the same conclusion.

Coupling the energy flow through the system to do the chemical and thermal entropy work is much easier than doing the configurational entropy work. The uniform failure in literally thousands of experimental attempts to synthesize protein or DNA under even questionable prebiotic conditions is a monument to the difficulty in achieving a high degree of information content, or specified complexity from the undirected flow of energy through a system.

This kind of evidence supports TB&O’s belief that there is no natural information mechanism that can correctly configure an arrangement of atoms:

We have noted the need for some sort of coupling mechanism. Without it, there is no way to convert the negative entropy associated with energy flow into negative entropy associated with configurational entropy and the corresponding information. Is it reasonable to believe such a "hidden" coupling mechanism will be found in the future that can play this crucial role of a template, metabolic motor, etc., directing the flow of energy in such a way as to create new information?

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My own reaction to TB&O’s rather negative assessment of abiogeneis is that if they are genuinely interested in the possibility of a natural route from inorganic matter to functioning organisms they are looking in the wrong place and therefore find what they expect: No evidence of abiogenesis. But if they do start looking in the right place there is a major epistemological snag: it is in the nature of abiogenesis (and evolution as well) to be difficult to observe; that is, it is an epistemically challenging domain. 

If natural abiogenesis has occurred on our planet then, as I have already mooted in this Darwin Bicentenary series, the coupling mechanism providing the information for abiogenesis is likely to be found in the arrangement of structures in morphospace; for abiogenesis to work there must exist a connected class of stable structures with complexities ranging from the very simple to the very complex; that is abiogenesis requires biological structures to be reducibly complex. This connected class of biological structures is an object that is neither dynamic nor visible but instead is a static platonic structure which, if it exists, must be implicit in the laws of physics. The information for abiogenesis and evolution is not going to be found in chemistry that encodes the right information in biopolymers in a straight forward way. The information structures, if they exist, will be found in a mathematical object spanning morphospace, an object that has no material reification.

The scientific challenge faced by those committed to abiogenesis (and evolution too) should not be underestimated because abiogenesis may be a computationally irreducible processes. If this is true then it follows that there is no simpler analytical proof of the existence of abiogenesis other than to observe the actual processes that generate life. In this case the evidence of abiogenesis will rest less on theoretical analysis than it will on observation. Hence an absence of fossil evidence becomes a serious barrier to scientific progress in abiogenesis and will add plenty of fuel to the fire of anti-evolutionism. Another problem for theories of abiogenesis is that if there is a natural route from inorganic matter to living structures then fossil evidence is likely to largely comprise of unstructured chemical signatures of equivocal interpretation. Researchers are thus left with little choice but to propose very tentative and speculative chemical scenarios that might look as though they have the potential to generate life. But if TB&O have presented the evidence fairly then it is clear that no consensus theory of abiogenesis exists, let alone a theory with a robust observational base.

TB&O in common with other anti-evolutionists conflate information and complexity:

Regularity or order cannot serve to store the large amount of information required by living systems. A highly irregular, but specified, structure is required rather than an ordered structure.

Whilst I would give a qualified acceptance to the idea that information is conserved in that it requires prerequisite resources either in the form of highly improbable pre-conditions or the huge spaces of a multiverse, is it not true in general that structural complexity cannot be “created” from regularity in relatively short times. Fractals and pseudo random sequences are an example of a “free lunch” complexity derived from simple starting conditions in polynomial computation times. As yet I know of no principled reason why the complex arrangements in morphospace required by abiogenesis cannot also be generated relatively rapidly from the right physical regime of laws. ID theorists may tell us that “equations and equations don’t generate Complex Specified Information” but in spite of that assertion equations can A) be the depository of large amounts of information, B) create complexity in polynomial time, and C) therefore be used to specify complex static forms. (See my last post)

The anti-evolutionists appear to rule out abiogenesis on the basis of the methodological rule “absence of evidence is evidence of absence”. But ardent evolutionists may claim that the onus is on ID theorists to demonstrate that biological structures are irreducibly complex and therefore cannot be product of abiogenesis and evolution. See this post of mine for the ironies of this stand-off between evolutionists and anti-evolutionists. The irony is further compounded when one hears atheists attacking theism on the basis that there is no God because “absence of evidence is evidence of absence”. God and evolution are both very complex objects so perhaps it is not surprising that like abiogenesis it is in the nature of God to be difficult to observe!