The Premium on Prediction

In this post of last July I considered the question of why we find theories (or agents) that make successful predictions more believable than those that work as retrospective sense making structures. I've now released this post as a PDF. It can be accessed and downloaded from here or from the side bar.

Hands on predictions are risky: But we tend to believe those predictive agents that get it right.

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We should disbelieve those like Harold Camping (left) whose predictions fail. Camping's predictions fell over more than once. The Watchtower's (Jehovah's Witnesses) predictions have failed many times; 1975 was just one of them. But people continue to believe these agents, so it seems that factors are at work other than a simple mathematical heuristic.

Breaking the First Law of Holes

The 1st Law of Holes: When you're in one, stop digging!

The North American “Intelligent Design” (sic) web site Uncommon Descent has a regular posting that is categorized as “news”. This series of posts, I think, is compiled by Denyse O’Leary; at least that’s going to be my working assumption here.

This post by O’leary involves a similar projection of her alter ego onto detractors that we find in a blog post by Biblical Literalist Jason Lisle . In both cases Lisle’s and O’Leary’s worst dreams about the efficacy of “natural forces” to act as a god substitute are set up as a straw man and then burnt at the stake. The fictitious evolutionists in whose mouths they thrust their words are actually their own selves.

Below I’ve taken some quotes from O’Leary’s post and commented on them.  It is well to remember that I’m not necessarily a committed to evolutionary mechanisms as currently understood and I would, in fact, classify myself as a ID creationist; but I would certainly not support the ineptitude of O’Leary's views. It is also well to remember that Christians who are part of the publicly funded academic establishment like Ken Miller and Francis Collins are O’Leary’s pet hate.

But there’s a big problem in loving both God and evolution. The premise of theistic evolution is incoherent. The “theistic” part connotes a creator God who knows what he wants to do and does it. The “evolution” part connotes a process that is random and in no need of supervision by any conscious agent because it is sufficient unto itself. So theistic evolution might be rephrased as “a system whereby God creates using a process that he cannot influence in any way and which has no need of him.” Huh?

My Comment:  Here, O’Leary is distorting the concept of evolution. As I've said so many times before, even assuming evolutionary theory as it is presently understood, it still follows that there is only a realistic chance of living structures being located by physical processes if the disordered agitations of thermodynamics are sufficiently constrained: So, whilst one might maintain that there is no “guidance” of the random walk behind thermodynamic diffusion (a diffusion which gives evolution its “search energy”), this diffusion must work within sufficiently narrow probability envelopes for it to have a realistic chance of “discovering” anything (A moot point in my view). If the known laws of physics determine those envelopes (the implicit assumption of evolutionary theory) then they constitute a transcendent object controlling the flow of events in time. This is exactly the opposite of O’Leary’s misleading claim that evolution is a process needing no supervision; evolution is effectively being supervised everywhere and everywhen by physical constraints. O’Leary is simply repeating the error of deism and then pinning that error onto to those Christian scientists she despises.

If the theistic evolutionist responds, “Oh I don’t mean that kind of evolution. I mean the kind of evolution which is guided by God to fulfill his purposes,” then the true evolutionist will reply, “Well, that’s no kind of evolution. That’s some sort of creation scenario and you have no right to use the evolution word.”

“But!,” protests the theistic evolutionist, “I want you to know that I have nothing to do with those Intelligent Design idiots. I’m one of you! I’m one of the smart guys who is up on science, not some primitive religious fanatic. I truly do believe that Darwin got it right and random mutation coupled with natural selection is all there is. All I’m saying is that God uses that process to create all the living things on Earth.”

My Comment: The so-called “true evolutionist” O’Leary speaks of here is her alter ego and therefore she is arguing against her own distorted concept of evolution, a concept which she wrongly portrays as an uncontrolled process. Rejecting the incoherent version of evolution that O’Leary stands for doesn't necessarily mean that one is wanting align one’s self with the smart guys who are up on science – rather it is more likely to be a case of, as she puts it, wanting to have nothing to do with those intelligent design idiots like O’Leary.

Anyway, here’s a little bit more from O’Leary’s alter ego:

“Oh brother,” says the true evolutionist, “You just don’t get it do you? As soon as you toss God into the equation you blow evolution to smithereens and reveal yourself as exactly what you say you aren’t—a religious nut case. Evolution doesn’t need god, or goals, or interference by any intelligent agent. All evolution needs is a steady supply of random mistakes and the process of elimination called natural selection. That will get you to any form of life no matter how complex. It’s beautiful and you’re just too stupid to understand that its self-sufficiency IS its beauty. Now get lost. You bore me.”

As I’ve played out this imaginary dialogue, I hope I’ve made clear that the last thing a theistic evolutionist wants is to be invited into the ID camp.

My Comment: Here we go again. O'Leary’s alter ego is imagining a process capable of generating life and tells us that it is self-sufficient.  O'Leary's alter-ego threatens to trivialize the production of life by caricaturing it as a process of “mistake elimination” that needs only trivial computational resources. She fails to see that the selection process would require far from trivial controlling physical algorithms. She is much too stupid to understand that evolution is dependent on very particular and highly sophisticated conditions being contrived. Therefore I'm not in the least surprised that the last thing theistic evolutionists like Miller or Collins would want, would be to be invited into the kind of camp that O’Leary stands for; one could hardly blame them if they repeated O’Leary’s words back to her: Get lost. You bore me.

Industrialisation and Christianity

Smoke Stack World.

I added the following comment to an article on Network Norwich and Norflok to an article by James Knight  about capitalism, science and Christianity. For the article see here.

I think you are on an important tack here James. Yes, we really do need to get a perspective on the fact that industrialization started about 1750 years after the birth of Christ. There were probably some significant precursors prior to 1750 like the breakup of the feudal system and the renaissance, possibly both related to the Back Death. Also, in the 1600s England, (the mother of commercialization and industrialization) started to experience a shift in its zeitgeist in favour of the rational. Not only that, it was a century when the money making middle classes clashed with the medieval rearguard in the form of the Stuart dynasty.  These money makers went on to innovate and subsidize mechanization. Yes, commercialism, (that is sheer profiteering) is implicated as one of the motivators of a life enhancing bread and butter technology and research base (although often very cutting edge science is done for its imaginative rewards without an eye on profit).  But having said that, it is clear many devout Protestants were in the thick of the social and technological innovations during industrialization, with their faith very much modulating their behavior.

It may well be that the scientific epistemic whereby theory is tested against experience was in part released by the Reformation with its emphasis on testing theology against one’s personal reading of Biblical texts. This is ironic because today’s Biblical literalists have a pathological view of science, a distortion that depends on an arbitrary demarcation between historical and “observational” (sic) science.. Since everything, including Biblical information, arrives at our “observational” doorstep via signalling it follows that in the final analysis, all science is bound up to a greater or lesser extent with history. The upshot is that the Biblical literalists of the 1960s “YEC reformation” are forced to compromise on the rational readability of our world, a compromise which ultimately undermines God’s creative integrity. (Caveat: None of this is to say that I’m necessarily committed to the mechanisms of evolutionary change as they are currently understood)

By and large contemporary evangelical Young Earthism only goes as far back as the 1960s “YEC reformation”, as in fact fundamentalist theme park manager Ken Ham will admit*. Moreover, he also admits that in spite of this “reformation” Young Earthism is very much a minority amongst high achieving academic Christians and Christian colleges – even in America. That I think is good news.

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/mangling-science-continuing-our-diet-of.html 

*Footnote: There are exceptions such as Adventist George McCready Price whose work was referenced by the 1960s Biblical literalists. It is an intriguing fact that nearly one hundred years before the "YEC reformation" an Adventist was at the bottom of the JW excursion into literal eschatology and date fixing.

Note:

In England industrialisation followed the necessary precursor of commercialisation. Commercialisation may be connected with the social mobility of the Anglo Saxon social ethos. But we mustn't forget the suffering and injustice caused by big social shifts:

Pre nineteenth century Norwich was a big producer of textiles, but it lost out to the cities that used power spinning and weaving such as we see in factories like this. Fanciful perhaps, but the spinning bank above reminds me of Turing's Bombe:

Western Dualism in the North American Intelligent Design Community. Part 1

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

At the recent Vulnerable Mission conference at Norwich Central Baptist Church (See here for details) I presented a paper which compared and contrasted Western dualism with rural African monism. This paper will in due course be made available.  In the meantime, as an example of Western dualism, I present below the first part of a case study. This case study is based on a post by North American IDist Vincent J Torley which appeared on the “Intelligent Design” (sic) blog Uncommon Descent.

In his post Torley defends his version of Intelligent Design against criticism by Orthodox theologian David Hart. In a previous post by Torley we discover that Hart has thrown out two blanket criticisms of Intelligent Design. These are:

a) ID depends on “gaps” in the natural order  

b) ID also posits a part time God who tinkers on and off with creation.

I can’t answer for Hart, who in any case appears to exclusively (and wrongly) identify the kind of views that Torley typically represents as Intelligent Design - in fact so does Torley himself. This is Torley’s first big mistake: As I once pointed out Christian physicist John Polkinghorne would, if pushed, also claim to be an intelligent design creationist and yet like myself he is loath to align his views with the category of ID that many North American evangelicals promote. However, Hart nevertheless raises criticisms that are similar to my own and this consequently draws Torley out, exposing his dualist philosophy, a philosophy which embeds the false folk dichotomy that can be expressed as:  Either God did it or  Natural forces did it!

Below I’ve taken several quotes from Torley’s long post and point out where I feel his categories are going awry.

Let’s begin with a definition. In its broadest sense, the theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain empirically observable features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, and that this intelligent cause can be shown to be the best explanation by applying the scientific method in order to rule out rival explanations, such as chance and/or necessity. (I assume that Dr. Hart is thoroughly familiar with Professor Dembski’s explanatory filter, so I won’t elaborate further.)

My Comment: Straightaway Torley is contrasting ID over and against “Law and Disorder” (Law and Disorder – what Torley inappropriately refers to as “chance and necessity”) by declaring them as rival explanations. (See my highlight in the quote from Torley). Dembki’s explanatory filter is partly if not fully to blame here because it polarizes apart Intelligence and Law & Disorder into two rival categories of explanation. Instead L&D should be included in the set of observable features (sic)  that are used to decide whether a meta-intelligence is to be invoked to make sense of those features. Dembki’s filter does work with human and alien intelligence but even here it is arguable that at the most fundamental level it breaks down: If one is an atheist and believes L&D are the primary reality then one is likely to believe that intelligence is only a secondary cause which in turn is itself a product of L&D. So, in short, Torley is already paving the way for a “God did it vs natural forces did it” shoot-out. His polarised categories invite the contrary belief that L&D are primary and not secondary.  Torley should be framing the question not as a choice between God and natural processes but rather as a question of whether the cosmos has features, features which are inclusive of L&D, which connote to us an all-embracing primary creative intelligence.

One obvious objection is that such a Deity might be nothing more than a mere Demiurge, who imposes forms on the cosmos but does not conserve it in existence. But if one could show that the features of the cosmos which indicate a Designer are not merely incidental but essential or defining properties of the cosmos, then it would follow that the cosmos could not exist without those features – in which case, the Designer Who is responsible for those features is also responsible for keeping the cosmos in being……

……So it should certainly be possible for us to determine which properties are its defining properties, and scientifically investigate whether these properties show signs of having been designed. An affirmative answer would mean that the Designer doesn’t merely tinker with the cosmos, but rather, gives it its very identity, and makes it what it is. (Let me add in passing that like many Scholastic philosophers, I consider the notion of a “pure passive potency” underlying all forms to be utterly unintelligible: like Suarez, I hold that even prime matter has a form of some sort.) Hence I see no reason in principle why cosmological Intelligent Design could not take us to a Deity Who maintains the world in being, as opposed to a mere Demiurge who does nothing more than impose his designs on a pre-existing cosmos. Of course, the argument for such a Deity would need to be fleshed out in a mathematically and scientifically rigorous fashion, which is something that has yet to be done.

My Comment: The ID community that Torley represents has only got itself to blame for this concept of the demiurge rearing its ugly head. If you are going to use an explanatory filter which explicitly sets up L&D and God intelligence as two rival explanations then it is a very natural inference that God is a being who works within the natural order as would a demiurge, rather than transcends it If, as Torley puts it, an intelligent cause is a rival explanation to natural forces then this is not at all conducive to the view that this intelligence is active in maintaining (presumably creating) those forces! Torley’s insistence on setting up God as a rival explanation to "natural explanations" leads to a deep intuitive paradox in his theology. As Hart's reaction shows, interpreting the North American ID God as akin to a demiurge is a very easy step to take.

But Dr. Carroll might reply that if naturalism explains the world more parsimoniously than what he calls “the God hypothesis,” then we may provisionally conclude, as a working hypothesis, that naturalism is true. Carroll also contends – and here, I think, he is on shaky ground – that simpler explanations are inherently more likely to be true, other things being equal. On this logic, then, even if we cannot know that naturalism is true, we might reasonably judge it to be likely, or probable.

My comment: Here we see Torley interpreting atheist physicist Sean Carroll to be a user of the same categories as himself, that is the naturalism vs. God hypothesis dichotomy. I can’t speak for Carroll of course, but it is conceivable that one may accept in its entirety the kind of “naturalistic” account of the cosmos offered by Carroll and yet at the same time be an intelligent design creationist. How is this? This is because theism, in its most general form, effectively adds on another layer of metaphysical structure in order to purportedly explain these nomological facts (to use the very words of Sean Carroll as quoted by Torley). That is, theism doesn't necessarily compete with naturalistic histories and processes but rather takes the natural order and embeds it in a higher level theological narrative. Of course, it goes without saying that for Sean Carroll this is, “an unnecessary complication” (quoting Carroll) and so he leaves it rather than takes it. I am not here to discuss Carroll’s views but instead wish to point out the difference between theism as an all-embracing meta-narrative that takes explanation to a whole new level and Torley’s take on theism whereby he habitually perceives “naturalism” as a rival of explanation to his homunculus intelligent design paradigm.  Where Torley has gone wrong is that instead of proposing God intelligence as a competing narrative to natural forces he should be proposing it as a meta narrative which embeds the scientific account of “natural forces”.

Further on in his post Torley quotes Thomas Aquinas:

[D]ivine power can sometimes produce an effect, without prejudice to its providence, apart from the order implanted in natural things by God. In fact, He does this at times to manifest His power. For it can be manifested in no better way, that the whole of nature is subject to the divine will, than by the fact that sometimes He does something outside the order of nature. Indeed, this makes it evident that the order of things has proceeded from Him, not by natural necessity, but by free will.

My Comment: Here Aquinas is of course talking about the miraculous as a discontinuity in the flow of “normalcy”. Now, I’m not going to argue against miracles, but interestingly Torley sees this quote through his polarizing lens:

Here, Aquinas says that God’s power and voluntary agency “can be manifested in no better way … than by the fact that He sometimes does something outside the order of nature.” I conclude that he would have had no qualms whatsoever about appealing to effects that require a supernatural Cause, in order to convince skeptics of God’s existence. The question which then arises is: are there any scientifically observable occurrences within the natural world, which point to its having a supernatural Cause?

My Comment: So Torley is looking for the discontinuities of the miraculous as pointers to the supernatural; fair enough, as we can’t rule out occasional miracles, but what if Torley fails to find them? Would that mean everything is “natural” and therefore there is no supernatural God? These thoughts flow very naturally from Torley’s dualistic thinking which has the effect of setting the supernatural in conflict with the natural.

Torley quotes Hart:

…[T]hose who argue for the existence of God principally from some feature or other of apparent cosmic design… have not advanced beyond the demiurgic picture of God. By giving the name ‘God’ to whatever as yet unknown agent or property or quality might account for this or that particular appearance of design, they have produced a picture of God that it is conceivable the sciences could some day genuinely make obsolete, because it really is a kind of rival explanation to the explanations the sciences seek…

My Comment: This argument by Hart follows if the role of God is one of being an explanatory stopgap; that is, as an explanation to fill the gaps not currently covered by Law and Disorder explanations. This God-of-the-gaps God is indeed in danger of being explained away. The fact that the North American ID community have staked so much on the idea that Law and Disorder are in principle insufficient to generate life means that their role for God faces this threat. But having said that Hart doesn’t tell us that if science should ever be in the position of providing a complete L&D description of nature, then the properties and qualities of the cosmos would include some very extraordinary laws; those laws are extraordinary by virtue of the computational complexity needed to locate a suite of laws capable of generating life in what is in fact a short algorithmic time. The upshot is that this still flags an intelligent design alert, albeit at the meta level rather than the competing alternative explanation level proposed by Torley.

At some stage, we reach an ultimate mathematical framework which explains how the multiverse works. If even this framework exhibits features which indicate design, then the design must be an essential feature of the cosmos, rather than a merely incidental one.

My Comment: I’m inclined to agree with Torley here: My main difference with Torley and his de-facto ID community is that they are staking too much on a belief that an L&D physical regime is in principle incapable of generating life, a belief which has the knock-on-effect of setting God against his own physical regime.

But having said I agree with Torley that attempts to press the L&D paradigm further by trying to explain our own L&D physical regime in terms of a higher level L&D regime (such as a multiverse) simply leads to a turtles all the way down regress.. There is no way in which the universe can be explained with trivial truisms even if one resorts to multiverse theory. Whichever way one tries to skin it, peculiar and contingent conditions have to be assumed as a starting point in one’s theory. So, in as much as we are faced with the inescapable truism that our theories of the cosmos will always start with non-trivial conditions this will invite a design meta-narrative, and in this respect I would certainly agree with Torley. (Ref: See here and here).

Torley quotes Hart as follows:

For Thomas Aquinas, for instance, God creates the order of nature by infusing the things of the universe with the wonderful power of moving themselves toward determinate ends; he uses the analogy of a shipwright able to endow timbers with the power into develop in to a ship without external intervention.

My Comment: To me this is at odds with what Hart has already said; namely that one can’t appeal to this or that particular cosmic feature or property as suggesting a need for a design meta narrative. In fact here Hart seems to be appealing to the observed fruitfulness of the physical regime to generate life as evidence of God’s work, which to me looks like a design feature prompting a design meta narrative! This paradox may have arisen because Hart, like other Westerners such as Torley, have two distinct categories when they should have one; that is Hart, like Torley sees the power of God in contradistinction to the innate power of nature.

However, Hart tries to square the circle by suggesting that this innate natural power has been outsourced to nature by God himself. This, I suppose, is better than Torley who, like the rest of his ID community sees the power nature as a rival explanation to God. But somehow Hart’s view still feels a little wrong. If nature is sufficiently endowed to generate life it would be a product of the patterns imposed by the cosmic L&D regime that run it. That L&D regime doesn’t look to me like some innate animistic power because this regime is a statement of pattern rather than innate power and has more the character of a transcendent object controlling nature. To me this is suggestive of God’s ever present immanent power rather an innate “natural” power. Perhaps I’m making too fine a distinction, here! But be that as it may, it remains clear to me that Torley and his Christian subculture are promoting a problematic paradigm, as we shall continue to see.

…to be continued

50 Years Ago: The Kennedy Assassination

See: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-first-conspiracy-theory-kennedy.html

Taking Science For a Fun Ride

For this guy it's a laugh-a-minute at the Creation Museum

More than one critic of Biblical Literalism has referred to Ken Ham as a clown.  Clown or not it would help the Christian cause if Ken stopped clowning with science.  For instance take this priceless quote by Ken:

But what Dawkins doesn’t seem to realize is that there is a difference between observational (operational) science—which is testable and repeatable—and historical science—which can’t be proven. For instance, humans can use measuring tools in the present to measure the width of North America—they can then do it again and again—repeating the measurement in the present. That’s observational science.

But the same humans cannot go and measure the age of the earth in the same sort of way. One has to use a process that changes with time and assume many things about the past (and such assumptions could be very wrong) to try to attempt to age date the rock—that’s historical science.

Biblical creation falls into the category of historical science, and so does Dawkins’s belief in evolution! Neither can be proven. They’re both systems of interpreting the evidence in front of us.

I’ll deal with this misrepresentation of science when I have more time to resume my Mangling Science Series. In so successfully deceiving himself  Ken Ham has taken many epistemically insecure and scientifically challenged Christians along with him.  But the good news is that anti-science Biblical Literalism is, even according to Ken Ham himself, on the wane:

In this day and age, more and more pastors, church leaders, and Bible scholars are choosing either not to take a stand on Genesis or to teach some form of evolution and millions of years.

Springs, Precipitates, the Paranormal and Heretic Hunters

Without generalising and extending our epistemology science will go down the tubes

Once again I find atheist Larry Moran’s blog an excellent frizzen for creating the sparks to ignite some thoughts on epistemology: The following quoted material can be found here.

***

I think there IS a conflict between science and religion. For example, I think that a proper understanding of evolution leads inevitably to the conclusion that there is no purpose or goal in evolution and that the evolution of humans on this planet was largely a chance event. This conflicts with many religious views.

My Comment: A proper understanding of evolution, even as it is understood by the academic establishment leads inevitably to the conclusion that it is highly directed in the sense that its probing “gaseous” fingers of probabilistic diffusion must be limited to very narrow channels in the space of possibilities, otherwise nothing interesting would evolve in realistic time scales. Using phrases like “chance event” fails to do justice to this background structure that guides the process of evolution. See this post where I discuss the channelled nature of evolution with one of Larry Moran’s commenters, a commenter who, like Professor Moran himself, seemed unable see the logic of his own position.

Let me just say by way of qualifying myself, that I'm not committed to the academic establishment's view of evolutionary mechanisms and I'm here only pointing to the implications of what people like Larry Moran must himself be committed to even if he is unaware of it.

There may be a conflict between science and religion if one conceives God’s involvement in natural history as necessarily being that of a kind of jumped alien homunculus who majors in tinkering with the natural order, making science, as we currently know it, fail at those points. (See:http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/does-intelligent-design-make-testable.html)

As for the concept of “purpose” let’s be clear that this notion has no meaning unless we are talking about a context where sentience is implicit and consequently where such concepts as plans, goals and aims are meaningful. In contrast there is no intrinsic “purpose” to be found in the mechanisms of evolution any more than one can find purpose in some man-made artifact without imagining the social context in which it functions. "Purpose" is an extrinsic property of an object and it exists by virtue of the object's relation to its context. In a similar vein: One can’t find purpose in the mechanisms of evolution any more than one finds sentience at the low level of brain neurons. Purpose and sentience are only found at the high system level. If purpose is to be found in evolution it will only become apparent in the higher context of the world-view within which one interprets the meaning (or lack of meaning!) of evolution. Therefore contrary to what Larry Moran says it follows that a proper understanding of evolution is not in itself sufficient to throw light on the subject of purpose (or lack of purpose)

I think that science can, and has, dealt with supernatural explanations and found them wanting in all cases. I do not believe in non-overlapping Magisteria. There's nothing that science can't investigate.

My Comment: I agree that there is nothing that can’t be investigated scientifically and I don’t myself believe in non-overlapping Magisteria. But this is not to say that science’s investigations will always be successful; as I have said here, amenability of an ontology to scientific investigation will have a bearing on the level of scientific success. It is quite possible to imagine intractable ontologies that do not readily yield their secrets to scientific epistemology.

I’m not really sure what Larry means by “supernatural explanations” but I suspect this is all bound up with the Western dualist mindset that makes a sharp distinction between natural and supernatural agencies.

I believe that Kevin Padian is wrong when he says that religious scientists such as Ken Miller, Michael Behe, and Francis Collins "do not place religious views above empirical evidence." They all believe in miracles, they all believe that humans have a soul, and they all believe in life after death. They all believe in the existence of a personal, creator God in spite of the fact that there's no evidence that such a being exists. 

Larry Moran appears not to understand how “evidence” really works: There is even evidence for David Ike’s bizarre world of reptilian conspiracy, but whether it is sufficient evidence and interpreted with epistemic discipline is another matter. Human beings do not proceed logically from evidence to theoretical narratives but are inclined to work from theoretical narratives to evidences. These narratives serve as sense making and explanatory objects of those evidences. This very human and open ended capability comes with all the potential epistemic hazards of imaginative and undisciplined over-interpretation. What Moran seems not to understand is that religious views are a way of interpreting accepted evidences against a backdrop of endeavor that seeks to reach an all-embracing world-view by abduction. People like Miller and Collins don’t differ with Larry Moran about evidences or the relatively low level physical science narratives in which these evidences are embedded. But they do differ with Moran in their willingness to put those objects and evidences in the much wider context of a religious world view. Miller and Collins are adding to the basic physical science narratives and not subtracting from them (as do fundamentalists). That they may believe in the occasional few and far between historical suspensions of the normal physical regime (i.e. miracles) can hardly be construed as anti-science heresy (which is, I suspect, the charge that Mr Moran is seeking to bring) and will make little difference to their science.

Postscript

The kind of objections to the paranormal that we see from Larry Moran may typically have their roots in an a-priori concept of what reality should be like. Rather than objecting to the paranormal for the epistemic reason that its observational protocols are far too erratic to give us a firmly established theoretical narrative the real objection is actually ontological; that is, there is an ulterior and exclusive line being drawn around what can be and should be. What is happening here is that when investigations start to go beyond the relatively amenable world of mechanisms established by spring extending and test tube precipitating science, the epistemic difficulties of acquiring knowledge are wrongly perceived as an ontological limitation rather than an epistemic limitation; that is, if it’s beyond the mechanisms within the purview of spring extending and test tube precipitating science then the default assumption is that it doesn't exist. But science isn't ontology, it is epistemology, an epistemology that must wait without prior prejudice on what ontology puts its way. A belief in the identification of the epistemically tractable with ontology is itself a world view that has effectively over interpreted the evidence available.

Having said that, however, I nevertheless respect diffidence about belief in the paranormal (which includes the miraculous) because the manifestation of the paranormal in human consciousness is highly erratic. I therefore find no good reason to blame anyone for genuine disbelief in it. I would certainly not take the line of the Christian fundamentalists who use Romans 1 in an indiscriminating and comprehensive way as a pretext to make a cathartic full-on hell-fire attack on their detractors, accusing them of the most heinous sins of blasphemy and/or heresy: We see atheists like Larry Moran accused of being crypto-theists suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness as per Romans 1. The history referred to in Romans 1 is inapplicable to people like, say, Larry Moran who gives every impression of having a clear conscience in their disbelief of the paranormal and of God. Romans 1 is about the rejection of the true God in favor of idolatry;  that is, in favor of perverse depictions of God and not atheism per see.

Given the erratic nature of the paranormal and all that is so bizarre and repugnant about many religious communities there are cultural circumstances that help fuel disbelief: This is, in fact, the general lesson that comes out Romans 1; namely, that false depictions of God promotes disbelief. In this connection I'm sure many an atheist will receive mercy on judgement day; they only need plead the mitigating circumstances of Western culture which includes the likes of the Jehovah witnesses, the Mormons, Answers in Genesis, Barry Smith, William Tapley, Harold Camping, David Koresh, David Berg -  the list is endless. 

Norwich and Norfolk Faith Group Lecture.

See https://sites.google.com/site/scienceandfaithinnorfolk/

There’s been another interesting lecture by Norwich and Norfolk’s Science and Faith group, (see here for my post on a previous lecture), this time by Astrophysicist Rodney Holder. According to the article on NN&N Dr Holder (as reported by Patrick Richmond) makes the following points:

The universe is finely tuned in order to give rise to life like us. Its current form arises out of very special conditions.

My Comment. (Just as a note here: We need to distinguish between supporting life and generating life.) That scientists like Dr Holder make constant appeal to the Universe’s very special “sitting-on-a-knife-edge” condition is evidence they actually support “Intelligent Design” in its most general sense. Sad to say, however, that the “Intelligent Design” rubric is probably to be avoided because it has become blighted by its association with anti-academic establishment groups and, much, much worse, Young Earth Creationism. (See John Polkinghorne’s understandable reaction to the term “ID” here)

A universe with an absolute beginning seems to pose a problem for atheists. Some cosmologists continue to seek theories that avoid absolute starts. These attempts are looking problematical in the light of work by Alexander Vilenkin.

My Comment: See my previous post here for comment on this. I’m glad to see Dr Holder steered round the Kalum argument.  It is true, however, that because we are creatures who live in the causal unfolding of time, a logical hiatus at the start of the universe is very compelling, far more compelling than the more abstract logical hiatus that is silently with us everywhere and everywhen. Human beings need an obvious discontinuity and/or change on the stage of time before it becomes newsworthy and demands explanation! As my good friend James Knight points out we are like fish swimming around in the sea asking where is the water?

The main feature of the Christian doctrine of creation is less about beginnings then in it addressing the deep question of “Why is there something rather than nothing”. “Something from nothing” doctrines such as we see from Stephen Hawkin contradict themselves, because they are clearly positing assumed physical properties from the outset. This is not “nothing” (See my comments here)

My Comment: This “Why is there something rather than nothing?” question is basically a probe about that immersive logical hiatus that is with us everywhere and everywhen.

Even the multiverse calls on special mathematical conditions for it to generate universes. Moreover a huge majority of the organisation observed in the cosmos is redundant to our existence; in terms of likelihoods our universe is far too over engineered if it were just one of an infinity of largely disordered universes.

My Comment: I touch on this issue in this series of posts. It is an issue that brings out the very particularity of our cosmos; that is, high complexity in service of simplicity. The North American ID community call this “specification” ( or complex specified information)  - definitely one of their better ideas, I'll give them that!  

Dr Holder concluded that modern cosmology seems to confirm Christian belief.

My Comment: By “confirm” I’m taking that not to mean making an inductive connection to “God” from the known universe, but rather a connection to God that is deductive. Given the known universe it doesn't follow in any inductive logical way I can think of that "therefore God".  On making note of the very general logical hiatuses Dr Holder refers to I've always preferred the deductive approach: That is "In the beginning God, therefore an intelligible rational universe”. (See here). "Evidence" for an object really means passing from object to evidence rather than evidence to object. Such are the imaginative a-priori epistemic methods of the human mind.

Whatever way we turn, whether to standard evolution, multi-verse, or continuous creation we find that the cosmos has particular and idiosyncratic logical "edges" to it. This is evidence of the mathematical truth that descriptive "compression" will always terminate with an irreducible kernel of information, and enigmatic non-trivial information at that.

***

Seeing people like Rodney Holder and the N&N faith group at work is a breath of fresh air. I’ve made it my lot in life to focus my time on the eccentric, bordering on crank, versions of Christianity, and sometimes I wonder why.

Note: See: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/grand-logical-hiatus.html

North American ID’s God of the Gaps Theology in the Spot Light at Last.

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

I was fascinated to read this post on Uncommon Descent referring to the criticisms of the de-facto Intelligent Design movement by a theologian David Hart. Essentially he’s taken them to task for their God-of-the-Gaps theology and how, if “law and disorder” science should fill the gap that this form of ID claims to exist, then at the very least embarrassment ensues. A critique of this “god-of-the-gaps” theology has, of course, been one of the themes of this blog and I give a list of relevant links below. I’m glad to see someone else taking this line of criticism against the “homunculus ID” paradigm.

However, I must qualify myself by saying that it doesn’t then follow that the engine of evolution as the academic establishment understands it is correct. Moreover, it is just possible that “evolvable” replicators are one of creations givens; after all something has to be accepted as a providential given and whatever that given is, it’s very, very cleverly contrived! I’m less concerned about the science of the North American ID community than the dualistic philosophy which motivates it.

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/a-science-lacking-in-content.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/wrong-question.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/theology-and-north-american-id-part-1.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/theology-and-north-american-id-part-2.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/once-more-unto-breach-dear-friends.html 

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/north-american-origins-of-life-science.html 

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/more-on-self-organisation-and-richard.html 

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/once-more-into-false-dichotomy-zone.html 

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/dembski-im-not-denying-evolutionary.html 

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/paul-nelson-computer-simulations-and.html 

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/does-intelligent-design-make-testable.html

Addendum 18/10/2013: Barry Arrington Screws Up
In a post dated October 17^th and entitled “Newton’s Snow Flake Error” we find that Barry Arrington of Uncommon Descent has suddenly latched on to the “Gap-of-the Gaps” critique of his version of Homunculus ID . Here is what he says:

ID proponents are often accused of making a similar “God of the gaps” error.  They are accused of reasoning along these lines:  “Living things are too complex to have evolved through natural processes; therefore God must have done it.”

And below we find his answer:

First, ID posits that natural forces are not, in principle, capable of generating the complex specified information found in living things (more precisely, ID posits that the chances of CSI arising through natural means is so vanishingly small as to be considered impossible as a practical matter).  Therefore, it is not just a matter of science not yet having found the answer.  ID argues for good reason that looking for a natural cause of a super sophisticated digital semiotic code is a fool’s errand.  Second, while natural forces cannot generate CSI, we do know of a cause that produces CSI routinely – intelligent agents.  Indeed, intelligent agents are the ONLY known source of CSI where the provenance of the CSI has been actually observed rather than inferred.  And while our digital code is not as sophisticated and elegant as that found in DNA, it is the same sort of thing.  Therefore, concludes the ID proponent, intelligent design is the best explanation for the data.


Here "natural forces" are habitually and implicitly identified with "law and disorder" physics; this identification is taken for granted. Notice that Arrington claims that these so called “natural forces” cannot in principle generate the complex specified information found in living things. This (never proved) in-principle-objection to law and disorder processes generating life is very important to the homunculus ID paradigm, as I have said before. This is because this paradigm’s implicit theological dualism makes a sharp distinction between “natural forces” and the “supernatural powers” of God. The logic of Arrington’s dualism means that these “natural forces” are seen as a kind of god-pretender to creation; it is no surprise that many of Arrington’s atheist detractors hold a similar dualist mindset although they are, of course, routing for“natural forces” as the agent of creation.

Arrington’s theological dualism means that it doesn’t occur to him that a physical regime capable of generating life would clearly be complex, specified and contingent: Viz: To locate the suite of algorithms capable of generating life is a problem with a high algorithmic complexity, so much so perhaps that it is beyond even human computational resources. Therefore you don't necessarily need a "gap" in the physical regime that governs our cosmos before you start proposing the operation of intelligence. I have never seen this issue addressed by the Homunculus IDiers; they appear to be unaware of  it except perhaps William Dembski.

Arrington goes on to betray that he is in thrall to “materialism” as a valid category of thought, a woolly metaphysical idea he habitually and unthinkingly equates with the well defined category of law and disorder physics:

The application of this type of reasoning is universally unobjectionable in certain areas of inquiry (e.g., forensics, archeology).  In other words, when an archeologist finds CSI in an arrowhead and concludes the patterns were created by an Indian and not natural weathering, his colleagues do not ridicule him for making an “Indian of the gaps” argument.  Only in biology is a straightforward inference based on sound premises ridiculed.  Why?  It is not the data.  Is not the reasoning from the data.  It is a Lewontinian insistence on a priori materialism – and that, ladies and gentlemen, is not science.  It is a faith commitment to a metaphysical position (which is often called “religion”).

The foregoing sums up the kind of naive homunculus ID theory that Arrington stands for; that is: “God as a-kinda-Indian”. If I wasn't a Christian liberal I’d be accusing Arrington of blasphemy at this point! His mitigating circumstance is that dualism suffuses Western religious thought and this includes atheists thinking;: Western atheists may not believe in God but that doesn't stop them having a concept of God as a "supernatural" homunculus to be contrasted against "natural" causes.

Caveat: It is possible, as I have already remarked above, that God directly provisioned our cosmos with, let’s say for the sake of argument, “evolvable replicators” rather than generated them from an observable physical regime. But if prototypical biological structures are a given, I would certainly not justify this as Arrington does by arguing from his implicit theological dualism; this is a case of arriving at the right conclusion but for the wrongs reasons.

Addendum 23/10/13
Two articles have recently appeared on Uncommon Descent asking "Is Intelligent Design Bad Theology", one by Barry Arrington and the other by V J Torley: 

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/is-the-bible-bad-theology/
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/is-intelligent-design-bad-theology-a-reply-to-david-bentley-hart/ 

They both start off by making one very fundamental mistake:  They implicitly assume an identification of their "God-of-the-Gaps" view of natural history with "Intelligent Design". This is, of course, wrong. Many Christian evolutionists, like say John Polkinghorne, who are not committed to logical gaps in natural history, would nevertheless admit a commitment to Intelligent Design were it not for the fact that this term has become blighted by a polarised contention. (See here: http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/polkinghorne-creationist-and-id.html)

V J Torley's article is long and I may deal with it at a later date.

God of the gaps thinkers hope believe the missing bits can't be found.

Generalizing Science: Beyond Test Tubes and Springs

The easy end of science

In many ways I agree with evangelical atheist Larry Moran’s concept of science as an embracing method that covers all our attempts to get at valid knowledge. But I think I’m going to have to qualify this statement!

I’m always suspicious of dichotomies and even worse those polychotomies where concept categories are multiplied into a complex of sharply defined distinctions. Much better, I feel, if catch-all categories can be defined which effectively identify very common or even universal features of our experience. For example, when it comes to epistemic method one sometimes hears the view that there are different epistemic domains called “magisteria”. The implication is that there are irreconcilably different ways knowledge is acquired. This take on epistemology fails to do justice to important commonalities of method that exist between so-called “magisteria”.  In contrast I prefer the sentiments that Larry Moran expresses when he says (See here):

I think that science is a way of knowing based on evidence and logic and healthy skepticism. I think that all disciplines seeking knowledge use the scientific approach. This is the broad definition of science used by many philosophers and scientists

Are there any knowledge questions that science (in the broad sense) can't address? I don't think there are. I think "science" covers all the questions even though it doesn't (yet) have all the answers.

There aren't "two magisteria" but only one. Unless, of course, someone is willing to propose a successful non-scientific way of knowing. I have asked repeatedly for examples of knowledge ("truth") that have been successfully acquired by any other way of knowing. So far, nobody has come up with an answer so we can tentatively conclude that science (in the broad sense) is the only valid way of acquiring true knowledge.

Moran also quotes philosopher Martyn Boudry:

I have expressed little confidence in the viability of the territorial demarcation problem, and even less interest in solving it. Not only is there no clear-cut way to disentangle epistemic domains like science and philosophy, but such a distinction carries little epistemic weight

Moran on Boudry:

Boudry says that the distinction between the ways of knowing used by biologists, philosophers, and historians are meaningless and there's no easy way to distinguish them (territorial demarcation).

I would more or less agree. These quotes are part of an endeavor to come up with what Larry Moran refers to as the broad definition of science used by many philosophers and scientists.  As I have said before (see also my side bar) science in its broadest sense is the attempt to resolve the tension between our experience and the theoretical narratives we use to understand our experience. This activity is so general and comprehensive in definition that I’m unable to see what it fails to cover.*

But in our epistemic efforts we find there are at least two variables:

1) Although broadly speaking our theoretical opinions are formed in the caldron of everyday experience, the standards of formality and rigor with which this is done varies considerably.

2) A variable beyond our control is the epistemic tractability of the ontology we are trying to come to grips with. Some ontologies present a harder scientific problem than do other ontologies. In fact some ontologies may never yield all their secrets to science.

This latter variable is most significant and affects the former variable. Although I would agree that the interplay of narrative and observation is the essence of all human epistemology, one finds that epistemic formality and rigor varies from discipline to discipline in a way that depends on the epistemic tractability of the ontology a discipline has to handle. This is because there is a trade-off between epistemic rigour and epistemic tractability: The more intractable an ontology becomes the less amenable it is to the minutia of formal rigour. Therefore the outcome is that with disciplines dealing with less epistemically tractable ontologies formal rigor may be sacrificed for progress (albeit less assured progress). It is the differential in epistemic tractability and the impact it has on epistemic rigor, methods and conventions that produces the appearance of distinct “magisteria”, although in fact the essential activity of juxtaposing observation against narrative is the common scientific theme in all “magisteria”.

Those physical scientists who are used to dealing with the relatively simple ontologies of the spring extending and test tube precipitating kind may find themselves making heavy weather of those disciplines in the humanities that try to make sense of far less amenable ontologies. Biochemist Larry Moran says above that science doesn’t yet have all the answers; we may have to settle for the statement that science may never have all the answers. Going right back to 2007 I used comment on Larry Moran’s blog. At that time I tried get across the message about degrees of epistemic tractability, although I saw no sign that the concept was taken onboard; I’ve never seen him admit that some ontologies are less amenable to science than others – to him it all seems to be homogeneous “science”. Below I’ve compiled a list of some of the things I have said in the comments section of Larry Moran’s blog.

Like all graded phenomena epistemology slowly and imperceptibly shades over from hard science through soft science to the wild imaginings of conspiracy theory. In this spectrum sharp lines of demarcation are difficult to discern. The apparently reasonable assumption that our world is rationally readable, an assumption needed to get hard science going is, paradoxically, the thin of  the imaginative wedge for conspiracy theory! (See here  http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-first-conspiracy-theory-kennedy.html)

I have a suspicion that evangelical atheists like Larry Moran are after well-defined criteria separating out the sheep from the goats that they can then use to police human epistemic efforts. It is ironic that the Biblical literalists, who are also in the business of policing human epistemology (by using shouts of "heresy!"), have long since beaten the evangelical atheists to the post on this one with their bogus distinction between “observational” and “historical” science!

Relevant links:

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/yes-its-all-science-larry-but-not-as.html 

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/epistemic-notes.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/its-science-larry-but-not-as-you-know-it.html 

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/science-and-imagination.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/on-epistemology.html 

Footnote :

* Religious Gnostics and fideists will of course claim that they have a superior “supernatural epistemic” and that it doesn’t classify as science. But the fact is their epistemic boils down to incorporating their claimed special experiences into a narrative of explanation. Their reasoning may be ropy and their claimed “inner light” experience suspect, but nevertheless one can observe the amusing paradox of those who claim to be above reason, wrapping narrative round their experiences and thus falling into the catchall of generalized science!
* The philosophy of science is a kind of science of science whereby theoretical narratives are developed around observations of human epistemic efforts.

Comments

See below for some of my comments about epistemic tractability taken from Larry Moran’s Blog:

26/9/2007: The ontology of some objects, especially if they are bound up with the particularities of history, makes them epistemologically less tractable than others. Evolution with its crippled snail’s progress not to mention its dependence on the vagaries of historical and aleatory events is less epistemologically tractable than say molecular objects. Evolution therefore provides much more scope for variations of opinion that, as already been hinted above, may well be informed not just by differences in experience but also differences in ulterior ideology. The suspicions engendered by the ‘hidden variable’ of ideology leads to distrust. Hence, rather than agreeing to differ, malign motives and devious machinations are ascribed followed by impugning of characters.

22/10/2007 Does the Universe have purpose? Theism posits an outer context that is intermediate between the extremes of randomness and simplicity, namely that of personality and deity, which presumably has the property of aseity. The loss of scientific tractability in theism is compensated for by a gain in meaning as it seeks to illuminate the human predicament in terms intelligible to human personality: namely justice, love, mercy, sacrifice, intension, providence, and, of course, purpose. That’s what they call theology. You take it or you leave it.

16/11/2007 Judgement Day: Science vs. Religion? I’m always suspicious of black vs. white renderings of reality, especially the social realities to which these subject domains pertain. Life is seldom that simple. True, a single battlefield with just two opposing sides reduces the focus fragmentation overhead as the single-minded (simple-minded?) can support one or the other sides. But if games theory has taught us anything then life seldom throws up two opposing sides with diametrically opposed interests; the more realistic picture is of various parties with blends of interest.

Moreover, I don’t think we have this clear-cut domain called ‘science’. Different objects of different complexity have different levels of epistemological tractability; that’s why I doubt that the historian’s methods are as clear cut and unambiguous as say the methods of the particle physicist.  Although for both workers empirical evidences are relevant (documents for historians, experimental ‘protocols’ for the physicists – and both use texts in their research), the logical and ontological complexity of history gives for a far great margin of ambiguity.

Although I agree that empiricism is a general method that covers the whole of life, the conceptual constructions with which we attempt to make sense of the empirical are not subject to a naive falsification view of science. The open endedness of reality ensures that falsification methods are only going to be effective in degrees depending on the objects under study. For example, in a police or historical investigation, ultimate falsification of a variety of scenarios may be impossible; in fact cases may remain unsolved. Therefore a more general empirical epistemological theory is required, especially when those complex objects we call ‘world views’ are at stake.

Even when it comes to something like God which you might think to be beyond the empirical, it is clear that people make observations about the world that are relevant to the question of deity: For example, whether or not evolution is a fact or whether a omnipotent personal God would preside over a world of suffering.

I am not sure I agree with Miller’s dichotomization of the supernatural and natural (once again this seems to me to be a suspicious black vs. white rendition of reality), but leaving that on one side let me say that I deeply respect Miller’s faith and his abilities and feel we need people around like him to show us that the debate on theism and evolution doesn’t easily reduce to an ‘us vs. them’ contention. This isn’t one of your straightforward battlefields Larry.

19/12/2007 What is ID creationism? Hi Lim, I don’t really want to interrupt this discussion of biological realities with philosophy, but let me just say this:

An anonymous commentator on this blog once said that evolution successfully ‘joins’ the dots of observation (and, one hopes, predicts dots as well!). I would certainly want to concede that. In fact one might say that all science does this to a greater or lesser extent depending on the epistemological tractability of the object in question: some objects, particularly complex objects like evolution, history, human beings and social realities in particular, present far less accessible dots in relation to their size and complexity than say relatively simple objects like springs obeying Hooke’s law. To cut a long story short let me just say that for me personally it is this spectrum of epistemological tractability by which theism gets through the net!

06/01/2007 National Academies: Science Evolution and Creationism: I don’t accept Gould’s idea of NOMA but (and this is the big but) I accept that reality presents us with diverse ontological categories with differing levels of epistemological tractability, therefore demanding different standards of practice in investigation: history, sociology, economics, archeology, meta-science (philosophy of science), evolutionary theory all proceed with less ease and formalization than say solid state physics, whose objects are relatively ‘simple’ in character. This spectrum of ontological categories, with simple objects giving way to increasingly complex and exotic ontological objects allows theism to ‘sneak’ in at the upper for people like myself.

Ken Miller has remarked on the possibility that the Divine will might exploit the apparently random perturbations on a chaotic reality to encode His will. This allows a subtle theist like Miller to be both an interventionist and a deist at the same time – he can have his cake and eat it! These theists can be crafty!

The existence or non-existence of Diety (or at least the Deity of the Judeo-Christian kind) is a question that does impinge upon observation: e.g. the issue of evil and suffering. Tell you what Larry, why not try praying for something and see if you get an answer? This video of one your usual suspects should give you some hints on how to pray.

13/04/2008: Complicating matters still further is the fact that the ontology of the cosmos doesn’t make all objects equally as epistemologically tractable and it is often difficult to determine whether a lauded ontology is the result of some deep emotional complex driving a theorist into a kind ‘theoretical delirium’ or due to genuine epistemological difficulties seriously compromising empirical rigor: the Martian ‘canal’ debacle is a case in point.

In defense of myself I have to reaffirm that from my perspective all theoretical constructions look to be part the same class in that they are all attempts to make sense of our basic ‘protocol’ perceptions. However, they do differ very widely in the quality of attitude, mental discipline, background ontological paradigm (or what have you) that has created them and the epistemological tractability of the objects in view. Moreover, as direct perception forms such a small window on the cosmos these theories and their ‘confirming’ observations arrive at our door for evaluation via The Text.