Evolution Needs to Evolve

American Specator ^ | 09/16/2011 | By Hal G.P. Colebatch

[SeekAndFind]

Professor of Atheism Richard Dawkins grows increasingly shrill. His outbursts include the following, not very recent, but typical:

__________________________________

It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).

__________________________________

You can, of course, make any point you like providing you don't care about first premises. One thing which evidently fails to enter Professor Dawkins' mental universe is the idea -- accepted by many scientists -- that the theory of evolution is broadly correct, but as an explanation of life and the human condition it is incomplete.

We know life exists. We also know it had to be created by some process. Biology tells us that that process was evolution. It tells us nothing about what set that process in notion, created the Earth we stand on, or created the universe from some unimaginable pre-Creation state without space or time. The idea that the Universe created itself out of nothing seems somehow unsatisfactory.

Whether the Heaven and the Earth, and human life, was created over 13.2 billion years following the Big Bang, or over six days as a literal reading of Genesis is interpreted as saying, actually does not matter.

Of course I accept evolution. I find the Biblical literalists who claim the Earth was created in six days, and who believe that we are all descended from a couple called Adam and Eve Fell who because they were tempted by a walking, talking snake, tiresome. I am more-or-less aware of the historical reasons why these fundamentalist beliefs took root and persist in some communities.

But this does not mean that evolution explains everything, or that it ought to explain everything.

[djf]

I will explain later if I need to why this fits on an evolution thread...
But for right now, I’m gonna take a short nap.

I have been thinking about writing this for a while, but it is only in the last week or so that it has taken on enough internal consistency. It may add to the discussion.
It is going to be quite lengthy.

TOE, or why physicists should play more horseshoes

Much of the things that we see or feel our colored by the slippery slope of syntax and the meanings of words and concepts, so I have thought about it alot to try to have some sort of a firm foundation.

Everyone, or at least most, hears about TOE. Theory of Everything. It is a model that physicists are trying to put together to explain why things are the way they are and (if possible) what is the meaning.

The one thing that proves is that most physicists are really, really, really bad epistemologists!

I’m going to use four or five examples here to explain what I think is going on.

First. Legos. We are going to take a big bag, a huge bag. We put a large number of regular legos in the bag, of whatever type/flavor legos come in, the important thing being that we put them in individually.
Now, we shake our bag. We shake it a bit more. Then we pour our legos out.
What do we see?
Well, assuming for our discussion that the legos are unbreakable, and that’s not necessary and is somewhat immaterial to the results, but just an assumption so that we don’t find broken legos, we find the following.
Most legos still come out individually.
But a SMALL! number of our legos have connected! For the purposes of the discussion, we assume that all the connected legos are simply two-fers.
We can then put them all back in the bag, being careful to not disconnect any connected (by randomness) legos, and keep shaking.
Everyone should be able to see where this example is going, as time goes on, we will find more and more complex patterns. It will have a hyperbolic distribution, the number of single legos will always vastly outnumber the connected sets, the two-fers will a;ways be way more plentiful than the three-fers, etc.
The point of the legos example is that it is not surprising at all that simple atomistic non-living items can be arranged by random forces in complex patterns.

Second example. Someone knocks on my door and I answer it, he’s standing there with a brick in his hand and asks “What can I do with it?”
I think to myself I could throw it at my neighbors cats, then a tractor trailer drives up and the back is full of bricks, so I got more bricks than I ever need!
I could build a walkway.
I could build an outdoor fireplace.
I could build a miniature model of the Taj Mahal.

Instead, I decide to build a model of a small hummingbird that lives nearby.

Now as part of my research, I decide to call ALL the physicists and architects of the world. I tell them the shape and details of the brick and ask them what I could build

None of them, not a single one, says a hummingbird.

According to TOE, shouldn’t it be obvious that I make a hummingbird? Well, not really. Because the simple properties of something don’t tell you what patterns you can make from it.

So I decide instead to build a model of the Taj Mahal, and move on.

Example three, in explanation
I and a couple buds used to play horseshoes. Summer days, a couple brews, the ladies hanging out with shorts and halter tops, that kind of thing. Now as you play horseshoes, you learn more about it, and have some fun. We all thought we were way better than we really were, but that’s not the point.
Somewhere on the planet, there are some real super duper horseshoe players. And they will be able to tell you details of the game and past experiences playing that you could not even dream about! Here is the point: The really good players who have invested a lot of time and study in the game will start to come to a conclusion.
They will conclude that there are parallels between horseshoes and life. I know it sounds crazy, but it is simply inevitable that some will conclude this.

Why would this happen?

It’s easy to understand but will take probably one of the longest sentences I ever wrote to explain it.

Any process or system of large complexity when studied in sufficient detail WILL BE SHOWN to be able to be mapped to other systems of large complexity, so that parallels, allegories, and metaphors can be drawn.

Saturday morning rolls around. Husband asks the wife what she plans on doing. She says she will bake a cake. He says he has to work on the transmission.
Neither one of them really understands what the other will do, but let’s look closer:
She gets her stuff ready, the mixing bowls, the spoons, turns on the oven.
He gets his craftsman tools close, his jacks, his flashlight.

They both have a place that they work, she works in the kitchen, he works in the garage.

They both have timelines to follow and steps that must be done in order to be succesfull.

There are a great many more similarities, but my point is that what they are doing actually might not be that different.

This is an example of how models can have parallels and be mapped to each other. This is PART of what we mean when we say “meaning”.
It happens because of two things: our human understanding and the way we try to make sense of the world and the actual process of modeling things.

SO now we can look back at our legos. Is there what we might call “meaning”?
I would say no.

We would find all sorts of examples of things get put together by the randomness. But that’s all it is. Yes, we might even some day empty out our bag and find a nice little model of the Taj Mahal. But for every Taj Mahal we find, we will find many, many more complete sentences that say the following:
E=MC CUBED
One attributes divine wisdom to it at his own peril.

See what I mean? It is simple randomness.

The last example.

People have been looking for meaning and knowledge for years without a good description of it. And they ask “What does it mean to have knowledge and communicate?”
One of the representations of knowledge goes something like this: our brains are like these boxes that have switches. My switches are set in a certain position, and when we communicate, that sets your switches in a similar position.

Why does this matter? Because NONE of the forces in nature (I mean the fundamental forces studied by physicists) can explain WHY I, as a collection of atoms, should do something that makes you, as another collection of atoms, have your switches re-arranged. Because I mentioned the Taj Mahal earlier, I tweaked peoples switches!

If our collection of legos in the bag were to do something even close to this, the physicists would be forced to admit “Hey. There is something going on here that we cannot explain.”

The expert horseshoe players above see similarities between horseshoes and life, even between horseshoes and the universe.
The physicists see the same between their studies of atoms and quarks which might be nothing more than another kind of lego. Admittedely, the ohysicists are closer than the horseshoe players, but NEITHER is sufficient.

Ultimately, the processes that happen during life are not due to the material things that humans and legos and the Taj Mahal are made of, but a result of the PATTERNS that make life. If there is an emergent field of science I think is needed, it is the study of patterns and geometry. Conway’s Game of Life is a good example, as many simple patterns can be constructed that have properties that are totally unpredictable from what we know at the start.

So what is the Taj Mahal REALLY made from? Is it made out of bricks? Is it made out of legos?
It is actually made out of imagination.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for sharing your fascinating insights, djf!

I also am keenly interested in geometry and patterns - both in the cosmos and in living systems. And along with that, information theory. For instance, the form (double helix) of the information content of DNA is quite engaging - but many ignore it altogether.

And I strongly agree with your horseshoe remarks. People are more likely to see what they want than to want what they see.

Scientific theories which cannot be subjected to rigorous empirical testing and falsification are often built on theorists seeing what they want to see, e.g. evolution, anthropology, archeology. Observations are fit "into" the theory.

Theories from the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, etc.) are formed from the evidence and are valued by their ability to be falsified (Popper) and how they "weather" such attempts over the years.

That is an enormous difference in discipline - the former seeing what they want to see. Both are subjective at the root because the observer is part of the observation.

Only God knows objective Truth. Only He can see "all that there is" all at once - every where and every when. Indeed, He is Truth because when He says something, it is. It is because He said it, e.g. "Let there be light..."

God's Name is I AM.

[djf]

Thanks!

It’s very obtuse. I could say that was me, or blame it on the subject matter.

My choice! So I will blame it on the subject matter!

There is a logical progression to the examples that have led me to some conclusions that are kind of startling, and for me personally, very rewarding. I will expand more on that later.

I’m still waiting for any scientist or even philosopher to explain to me why, when the husband got home, he found a cake.
In the shape of a transmission!

;-)

[betty boop]

The point of the legos example is that it is not surprising at all that simple atomistic non-living items can be arranged by random forces in complex patterns.

Thank you, djf, for these marvelous thought experiments!

And yet this propensity of legos — simple atomistic non-living items — to "arrange" in complex patterns is not really random. For there is a "bag" (a constraint) and something (e.g., you in this thought experiment) is "shaking" it. I.e., a "force" that is deliberately applied and is therefore not "random." If the legos seem to "arrange themselves," it is because there are [non-random] "rules" that constrain the types of outcomes that can be achieved by these simple atomistic non-living items when they are "agitated" by this outside force.

As my dearest sister in Christ Alamo-Girl reminds us from time to time, we cannot say what is "random" in a system unless we know what the system IS. To me, the word "random" stands for the (observed) behavior of a collection of objects whose (actual) behavior we don't really understand.... So we intone the word "random," and are thought to be geniuses (rather than ignoramuses).

You wrote:

Everyone, or at least most, hears about TOE. Theory of Everything. It is a model that physicists are trying to put together to explain why things are the way they are and (if possible) what is the meaning.... The one thing that proves is that most physicists are really, really, really bad epistemologists!

It seems to me that physicists and scientists in general aren't all that interested in understanding the "why" of things, merely the "how" of things. If I might put it that way. Questions of value and meaning are beyond the scope of the scientific method anyway. IMHO (FWIW).

One thing's for sure: physicists really are bad epistemologists — if they try to universalize what are actually finite observations. This instantly lands them in what A. N. Whitehead called the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness — a fallacy fairly routine nowadays in both the physical and life sciences.

You wrote:

People have been looking for meaning and knowledge for years without a good description of it. And they ask “What does it mean to have knowledge and communicate?”

To a scientist, it means to have a formal model which captures "knowledge" and provides a suitable language by which it can be communicated (shared with other minds).

But it seems to me that science is not so much about knowledge as it is about data. Data is the raw material of knowledge, not knowledge itself. Something more is needed to convert data into information (knowledge) — and that is mental processing by an observer. And still we are far short at this point of questions of meaning — which belong, not to science, but to philosophy and theology.

I so agree with you here, dear djf:

Ultimately, the processes that happen during life are not due to the material things that humans and legos and the Taj Mahal are made of, but a result of the PATTERNS that make life. If there is an emergent field of science I think is needed, it is the study of patterns and geometry.

Nature is replete with patterns and regularities, the mere presence of which strongly argues that nature is principally not "random" at all at the global level. Such patterns and regularities, involving persistence over time, bespeak of lawful — not "random" — behavior.

And so it is not at all surprising to me that "Any process or system of large complexity when studied in sufficient detail WILL BE SHOWN to be able to be mapped to other systems of large complexity, so that parallels, allegories, and metaphors can be drawn." And can be drawn clear across different knowledge disciplines.

Thank you ever so much, dear djf, for your excellent, mind-bending thought experiments!

[djf]

Thanks!

Note that my original post is king of a foundation for conclusions that I really didn’t spell out.

I am composing a reply offline and will post later.

;-)

[djf]

kind of, not king of.

I gotta stop posting in the dark!

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Thanks again for inviting me to another wonderful discussion. As before, I will speak from inspired ignorance.

Since we, as Christians, all agree, I presume, that God is the end-all, be-all of everything, He is boundless in space and time. When you consider the implications of “boundless”, then this and most conversations of the sort become meaningless. If He always has been and always will be, the very definition of eternal, then what does “beginning” mean? Why do we bother ourselves with these things other than through a self centered and egotistical desire to “know”?

God IS! God always has been! God will be forever! As A-G offers frequently, God said I AM. That says it all! So why do we discuss this? I suppose it is to try to understand HOW God’s universe works, and ourselves in it. Yet, to try to determine whether things happened because of God or for some other reason is a futile gesture.

Relax! Love it, live it and enjoy it! Let the scientists and engineers learn how it works and how to use it to make even more things work. It is our place to simply love and glorify God.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!

As my dearest sister in Christ Alamo-Girl reminds us from time to time, we cannot say what is "random" in a system unless we know what the system IS. To me, the word "random" stands for the (observed) behavior of a collection of objects whose (actual) behavior we don't really understand.... So we intone the word "random," and are thought to be geniuses (rather than ignoramuses).

As an example, a sequence of numbers pulled from the extension of pi would appear random to an observer when they are, in fact, highly determined. Which is to say, any time a person calculates pi to that extent, the same numbers will appear in the same position.

We mere mortals do not know - indeed, can never know - the full number and types of dimensions (e.g. spatial and temporal.) So whereas "randomness" is a very useful construct in mathematics it does not translate to the physical "world."

The same is true of the mathematical term "infinity" because space/time is finite.

As another example, scientists cannot say that massless particles which have no direct or indirect measureable effects do not exist. Or to put it another way, the scientist cannot say a thing does not exist on the basis of his inability to measure (observe) it.

God's Name is I AM.

[Alamo-Girl]

Since we, as Christians, all agree, I presume, that God is the end-all, be-all of everything, He is boundless in space and time. When you consider the implications of “boundless”, then this and most conversations of the sort become meaningless. If He always has been and always will be, the very definition of eternal, then what does “beginning” mean? Why do we bother ourselves with these things other than through a self centered and egotistical desire to “know”?

Indeed. And I confess to being a curious creature. LOLOL!

Thank you for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ, and thank you for your encouragements!

[djf]

Pt. 2

OK!

I probably should have done an outline before I did this, but I think I got most of it covered.

First, let me say this. I may (actually, there is no doubt) say some things here that might upset certain people. I don’t mean to say by that

that there is anybody here I blame in any way, but we all are grown up enough to realize that religious beliefs are very closely held by people, certainly a large part of their identity, and I am in no way attacking anyones personal beliefs. Too often I have seen threads that talk about evolution, etc. descend into crippling flame wars with literally viscious personal attacks on both sides.

These are only my observations and conclusions based on the evidence before me. Everyone else is perfectly free to come to the observations and conclusions based on the evidence and experiences they have had. I will happily discuss and debate this with anyone but will not argue with anyone.

Second.
In the interest of full disclosure, I believe in evolution. Let me qualify that.
We all know DNA can change.
We all know that changes in DNA can be passed on to future generations.
That’s what I believe, and I am not qualified enough to say if that means man descended from apes, or the other way around! Or if man descended from ferrets! Or if aliens came down and tweaked DNA of animals here! My belief that DNA can change and be passed on DOES NOT in any way rule out the possibility that God came down, scooped up a handfull of dust, and placed Adam in the Garden alongside all the other animals and plants he had already created.
I don’t have a personal interest in evolution and am not here trying to convince anyone about evolution. It is, in my thinking, kind of a side issue.

But I need to make two statements about evolution.

Darwin was, in my opinion, most of all a naturalist without equal. His powers of observation and his persistence was stunning. I have read “Origin” many years ago, and just last year re-read “The Voyage of the Beagle” about his trips to South America, and can say I firmly believe when he went into the field, he went out without any pre-conceived notions about what he SHOULD see, and reported what he saw. He was highly educated, mostly about biology of course, but also interested in geology, climatology, oceanography, sociology, pretty much everything that post-Rennaisance science had to offer.

The Bible itself describes something that COULD be interpreted as evolution. Gen 1:11 talks about the plants emerging. Gen 1:20 talks about the first appearance of THE MOVING CREATURE in the waters. It then goes on to describe more and more complex animals appearing, culimnating with man.
I can’t think of any way that current theories about evolution contradict the Biblical narrative of the appearance of life.Except, perhaps, the creation of Man. And IMHO we are not given enough detail in the Bible to say that man DIDN’T come from evolution, a “day” in the bible being 1000 years (meaning a long time), so we know that however man got here, it took longer than a coffee break!!

Anyways evolution is not a necessary part of my discussion.

Last prefatory note:
I want to make crystal clear I AM NOT DINGING PHYSICISTS!! My bookshelf is LOADED with physics and chemistry and math and I have looked at hard sciences my whole life.
BUT!!
We hear terms like “Theory of Everything” and “The God Particle” and cannot help but wonder or speculate if physics is trying to go somewhere that in fact and in truth it has no business going because it is incapable of proving some of those things one way or another. In his wonderful essay “The Domain of Physical Science”, A. S. Eddington pretty much puts science in it’s place when he shows how sciences are nothing more than taking the readings off of dials. Pretty much just taking measurements and hypothesizing why they get the results they do. In NO WAY being able to say if something is good or bad or Godly or musical or anything else. Those subjective qualities are OUTSIDE THE REALM of what gets measured by the hard sciences. So it is a bit of an exaggeration and quite presumptuous to use some of the terms that seem to be going around.

Onward!

BB, sadly “random” can mean different things to different people. One of those slippery words, depending on if it’s used casually or in a more technical fashion.
By “random”, I am trying to say that the results occur in a non-deterministic way, and do not take on any favored form based on some influence of the experimentor.

Now in my previous post I described four examples (what I called examples) and will now discuss them a bit further.

The examples were:

The legos-in-a-bag universe
The me with a truckload of bricks case
The horseshoe players speculating on thing
The husband working on his car and the wife making the cake

The first example of a legos universe represents a place where there is (as of yet) no INTENT. No direction. No preconceived result or end state. No emotion, no values, nothing subhective. The legos are by every definition DEAD.
This is a very important point. The legos are dead.
When we have a bunch of dead things, no matter how we put them together or add them up, they are still DEAD.
It’s because of logical laws of conjunction.
If we had a bunch of RED things, then no matter how we put them together, whatever we could possibly build out of them, that thing that gets built will be RED!!!
All (and I mean ALL!!!) of the universal atomistic things we know about in our universe (atoms, photons, closed, bounded regions of time and space, electromagnetic fields), all of these things are DEAD!

Our legos universe kinda clicks along, day after legos day, and builds and tears down these more and possibly more complex things made up of legos AND THEY ARE ALL DEAD.

Now here is where I have to add a point: It will fold back into things later.
We, as humans, as philosophers have painfully learned something over the years.
We can make good, educated guesses and predictions about what nature might or should do, but these are, at the very best, just guesses!
About the time we try to say something concrete about nature, she turns around, smacks us upside the head, has a good laugh, and then goes off and does what nature does when we’re not watching.

“You will never get that thing to fly, it’s heavier than air!!!”
Wham! Slap!!
“You can never travel faster than the speed of light! It’s impossible!”
Smack! Double smack! (incidentally, happens all the time in the QM world, it’s called the tunnel effect)
Nature is laughing so hard she can barely contain herself.

Now in the second example, the example of me building things out of a truckload of bricks, something got introduced.
Intent. My intent.
The universe of bricks is QUALITATIVELY DIFFERENT than the universe of legos, not just because it is bricks, not legos. Because of my intent.
And that is why I say the Taj Mahal isn’t made of bricks or legos, it is made of IMAGINATION!
In our legos universe, there is no intent. There is no imagination. If we dumped our bag of legos and found a small model (there’s that “model” word again!!), we could not possibly conclude that there was some kind of legos architects... or could we?

The third example talks about our horseshoe-playing philosophers. I emphasize that they might sometime conclude something along these lines “Well, life is like horseshoes, because sometimes you have a string of bad like..”
I used this as just an example.
AG!, you have seem to interpreted this as a failing of sorts that people fall into. I meant it as EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE!

Our horseshoe players, by making these speculations, are mapping the INSIDE (their experiences and knowledge and understanding) to the OUTSIDE (the external world, politics, astronomy, whatever!)
This is one of the most profound processes that exist in the universe. No single lego will ever do this.

And whether they are right or wrong, in a universal sense, THEY ARE ALWAYS RIGHT! Because the process and the model WORKS, even if the conclusions are wrong!

There’s that “model” word again!

The last example was the model of the cake-baking and the car repair. This one serves to show that these “processes” and models can, on the surface, be very different, but there are underlying similarities that make them much the same. I could just as well have said that she was going to bake a cake, in the meantime, an alien near Alpha Centauri would be changing the tires on his flying saucer.

The Pythagoreans studied math. They came to understand that the truths they found were true everywhere. On a hillside in Greece or in some far-away land. They were true yesterday and would remain true tomorrow.
So they (rightfully, IMO) attributed a certain amount or aspect of divinity to their findings.

This essay has been an attempt by me to prepare to ask the following question:

Is life made of matter?

I think I have presented enough for most people to say “Well, you really can’t answer that question...”
Asking the question itself is like asking the question “Is a fire truck made up of red?”

Well, every fire truck has some red, but red is not the totality of what it takes to make a fire truck.
And in the same way, physical bodies that are alive are made from atoms or maybe even legos, but that is pretty much IRRELEVANT as to us deciding whether it is alive or not!

We could not, even with all our sciences, make up a list of questions that caould be asked to positively conclude that something was alive.
Does it have goals?
Does it take naps?
Does it reproduce?
Does it dream?

No matter what list we can come up with, it is IMPOSSIBLE for use to have a precise definition. The best we can do, is by watching the behavior, and come to some kind of conclusion. We may even then still be wrong.

If you believe the above, then the conclusions becomes the following:
Matter is arranged in patterns and the patterns exhibit behavior.

The life force is in the behavior, not in the atoms.

Kinda sounds like I am kicking the can down the road. A distinction without a difference. Until...

we remember that plain old energy can form patterns too!

Light. Radio waves. Sound. Thermal energy.

Kinda makes you go Hmmmmmm.....

Now I’ve thought about these questions for years and these are pretty much my conclusions. They are not scientific or emperical in a sense that they can be documented and proved, but arguments against the models and conclusions are not very strong.

But I want to emphasize they are still just opinions.

The implications are fairly astounding and I will leave them to the readers imagination.

And these are the reasons evolution does not bother me I have a religious faith of sorts, although I would not say I adhere to any particular church. I do believe in a higher power, but whatever it is, it is beyond our conception.
Evolution is a type of scaffolding. It is little more than the hooks you put into walls to hang pictures on.
If evolution is true, that doesn’t in any way, shape, manner, or form, make prayer less true.

One final exercise before I close.

We return to our legos universe.

What happens if one day, when we dump out the bag of legos, we find the following:
An object that is able to pick up various legos and build an exact duplicate of itself.

It would be an astounding occurrence and have huge scientific interest! But I’m fairly sure everybody would call it simply a machine, and no one would call it “life”.

Let’s go as far out on the limb as we can and imagine we ourselves can build something out of legos that everybody is able to examine and we decide that it is alive. What happens if we put it in our lego universe?
Does that universe have a God? Are WE the Gods?
My opinion is that a BIG part of God is THE POTENTIAL for all these things happening, but another big piece is all the processes and models we have described. So I am unsure at best, but I would tend to think that if there is something living in the lego universe, then there absolutely is a God. Because it is the models and processes INSIDE the lego creature that map to the POTENTIAL that exists outside him, perhaps as he looks up at the lego stars in the lego night.
I will leave it to everyone else to come to their own conclusions about that.

I have had great pleasure thinking about and writing this essay and hope it inspires some questions and helps answer some!

[betty boop]

...A. S. Eddington pretty much puts science in it’s place when he shows how sciences are nothing more than taking the readings off of dials. Pretty much just taking measurements and hypothesizing why they get the results they do. In NO WAY being able to say if something is good or bad or Godly or musical or anything else. Those subjective qualities are OUTSIDE THE REALM of what gets measured by the hard sciences. So it is a bit of an exaggeration and quite presumptuous to use some of the terms that seem to be going around.

Indeed. Eddington's comment reminds me of something that the great American psychologist and philosopher William James said to the great British mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell (in a letter dated October 4, 1908):

My dying words to you are, "Say good-by to mathematical logic if you wish to preserve your relations with concrete realities!"

Concrete realities include such things as redness, love, fear, faith, etc., etc. — all of which are wholly beyond the methods and scope of science, and which really can't be modeled mathematically. Or so it seems to me.

I'm still working through your intriguing article, djf. And I'm still not sure what conclusions, if any, you meant to draw — but then I'm a little slow on the up-take sometimes. :^)

I'll write again later.

Thank you so very much for your fascinating "Pt. 2" essay/post!

[TXnMA]

Dear Sister,

For once, I find myself in disagreement with one of your points":

For my spatial analysis software for archaeologists, I created an algorithm that directly converted the absorption color values from the Munsell soil color charts to RGB illumination for display on a calibrated monitor.

Creating a numerical formula to generate any degree of "redness" you want is a trivial exercise. All that is required is agreement on a single wavelength that constitutes "red".

For example, the hexadecimal value, "#FF0000", produces supposedly "pure" red when rendered by FR's HTML interpreter, whereas "#CC0000" produces a "pure" red in a darker shade, "#EE4900" produces a red with an orange cast, and "#DD0055" produces a red with a bluish cast.

"Redness", can, indeed, be modeled mathematically. So, I would exclude "redness" from your

"Concrete realities include such things as redness, love, fear, faith, etc., etc. — all of which are wholly beyond the methods and scope of science, and which really can't be modeled mathematically."

list. Of course, I agree with the others... ;-)

[betty boop]

But what does "red" mean to a calibrated monitor? LOLOL!

I'll take your expert word that redness can be modeled mathematically. Still, I think it is unwise to conflate models with actual reality.

Does any of this make sense? [I'm "on drugs" for flu and I'm not sure I'm thinking all that clearly.]

Thanks so much for writing, dear brother in Christ!

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Christianity has much competition from other beliefs. Atheism is a belief, as is scientism, communism, and Islam. Agnosticism is not an enemy because it is the suspension of belief, but agnostics lean more toward scientism than Christianity. Like doubting Thomas, they need something they can see before they can believe.

Evolutionists believe in scientism although the Bible explains reality better. Why? Because to them the Bible ain’t science! Their belief is scientism and it is in competition with Christianity. If the scientific method cannot be employed or it can’t be predicted by quantum mathematics, then it is questionable at best and most likely false. That is their belief. That is who they are.

To borrow a liberal phrase, why can’t we all just get along? Accept the fact that the energy behind everything, Einstein’s unifying force, is God and then let the scientists satisfy themselves with discovering what he did it. They can never understand how, only what.

Science can’t explain the abstracts that give meaning to existence. The Bible can. Science can’t even explain existence other than to accept that “it is” and then attempt to explain the mechanics, chemistry, etc., of that which exists. If science can accept existence, a leap in faith from the very beginning, why can’t they accept the Bible’s description of the beginning and of man’s importance to God in His creation?

I gonna tell you why! Competing world views become so engrained, so personal, that the destruction of a world view destroys the essence of those who hold it. It threatens their very existence. Hegel and his Dialectical Materialism, on which Marx and Engels based their philosophy, must reject Christianity in order to be true. So does Islam. So does scientism. So does atheism. To those who hold those views they are central to their lives.

Most of us don’t hold any of those world views to the extent I am describing. We just go along to get along. Yet, once a view gets broad acceptance in a society it gets incorporated into our basics belief about reality. It becomes us. Christian principles get incorporated into the everyday life and the laws and mores of a Christian society whether one is a Christian or not. The same with the others.

An interesting point in all this is that Christianity is rather passive. It depends on a sincere desire of a person to know about Jesus and the Trinity before God reveals Himself to them through Grace. Once that is granted, then Love, the Truth, the Light appear and the real world is revealed. That cannot be imposed by some firebrand preacher or massive movement. It has to be personally sought. Yet, once achieved, it destroys all the other beliefs. Salvation is a personal thing. It is not a collective thing like the others.

Evolution? Who cares? Big Bang? Who cares? It is all God’s creation. Is that begging the question? Who cares? It is still the simplest and most reasonable explanation, and look at all the fringe benefits! Joy, happiness, peace, a feeling of self worth and many more.

Let the scientists busy themselves with uncovering the details of God’s magic. Many worthwhile things have come from that with many more still to come.

Let the philosophers ponder. They enjoy it and occasionally great societies grow from their ideas, but only those ideas based on the principles explained in the Bible. I am not saying that all successful societies were based on the Bible but rather on the principles expressed in the Bible.

[tacticalogic]

It would be noteworth to quote Jastrow again when he said, "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the moutains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peaks; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

And Jastrow himself benefits from all the discoveries the scientists have made to scale that mountain, while he scoffs at them for doing it. Short sighted person, this Jastrow.

[betty boop]

By “random”, I am trying to say that the results occur in a non-deterministic way, and do not take on any favored form based on some influence of the experimenter.

Hi djf! Picking up where I left off, RE: the above italics.

Thank you for defining the term "random." You are right: it is a very slippery word that gets tossed around as if everybody could agree on what it means, which they don't. I.e., it means different things to different people. (To me, it is a sort of tacit confession that there is something going on that we don't understand.) So if we are to have a conversation, it helps to know what you mean by that word.

I think you've hit on an interesting insight: "random" refers to experimental results whose outcomes are "non-deterministic" in the sense that they do not depend on the presupposition(s) — conscious or unconscious — of the experimental observer. (Did I get that right?)

It is so very ironic to me: Modern science has expelled final causes from its method, final cause being a purpose or goal which, of course, can only be formed in a being that can think and act. "Scientific" materialism has absolutely no use for goals or purposes in nature: This philosophical doctrine insists that everything that exists is "random" matter in its motions, period. And yet every scientist that tries to make concrete reality "fit" his model is tacitly, if unconsciously, working towards a final cause.

In your original essay/post, djf, you remarked:

Everyone, or at least most, hears about [the] Theory of Everything. It is a model that physicists are trying to put together to explain why things are the way they are and (if possible) what is the meaning.... The one thing that proves is that most physicists are really, really, really bad epistemologists!

LOL, I so agree! Except for the part about "meaning": In general, I don't think physicists care much about that. It is a very bad epistemologist, indeed, who can take a concrete observation and universalize it into a "law of nature." The problem here is our ability to observe is so very limited. The current ToE has managed to integrate three of the four fundamental forces of nature, but it cannot fit the fourth, gravity, into its model. The reason for that may be that gravity is an interdimensional phenomenon; and we humans cannot "see" outside "our" dimension....

Anyhoot, your legos are inert, "dead" matter. I gather your point is that dead matter does not bootstrap itself into life; nor does random, inert matter (legos) have any principle in itself that can generate order in nature — patterns and regularities that are evident to any unbiased observer of the world. You suggest that it takes "intent," or "imagination," for something "to be the way it is, and not some other way." Indeed.

But whose imagination or intent? Are we to attribute it to some "God particle," as certain physicists propose? Again, if we are to understand "particle" as a species of "matter," then how does this matter acquire divine attributes such that it is a purposeful, willing, and effective actor in the creation and evolution of the world?

It seems to me that all too often, scientists derive models of the world, and then try to make the world "fit them." But the world will never "reduce" to any man-made model. Which I gather is what William James (an agnostic) was trying to convey to Bertrand Russell (a very hard-core atheist): "Say good-by to mathematical logic if you wish to preserve your relations with concrete realities!"

Which is not to say that mathematics and geometry are useless cosmological tools. I think what James was saying is that mathematical logic is tantamount to calculative processes. Mathematical logic is great for constructing formal systems (scientific theories); but it cannot capture the fullness of reality (as Gödel made clear).

Pythagoras was not interested in mathematical logic; he was interested in number and geometry as revelatory of the essential structure of the Cosmos. Plato was his student. Plato's creation myth — the Timaeus — was (according to the 2nd-century Neoplatonist Numenius) "cribbed wholesale" from Pythagoras. But this would be difficult to prove, since Pythagoras' teachings were conveyed orally — he himself wrote nothing down.

But I digress. I'd really love to get into Plato's creation myth, but I've run on so long by now. Let me just say that it is responsive to the matters we are discussing: How "random" matter is drawn into actualized, living forms.

You asked: "Is life made of matter?" I'll answer that question: NO. Nor is life an epiphenomenon of matter. Nor is consciousness. I'm running out of time here, so maybe we can discuss this further another time.

One thing you said struck me as oh, so true: that we "are mapping the INSIDE (their experiences and knowledge and understanding) to the OUTSIDE (the external world, politics, astronomy, whatever!)." And thus you reveal yourself to have a strong affinity to Natural Law!

Let me draw you a picture of that, as informed by the insights of the late, great mathematician and theoretical biologist, Robert Rosen:

Will close for now — but I hope to hear from you again soon, dear djf! This has been a fascinating conversation, and I thank you for it!

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

The only way mammalian evolution is even possible is with heterosexuals.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Mammalian evolution is entirely heterosexual.

All men are born of a woman.

Is the red working?

Test.

[betty boop]

Competing world views become so engrained, so personal, that the destruction of a world view destroys the essence of those who hold it. It threatens their very existence. Hegel and his Dialectical Materialism, on which Marx and Engels based their philosophy, must reject Christianity in order to be true. So does Islam. So does scientism. So does atheism. To those who hold those views they are central to their lives.

Oh so very true, dear Mind-numbed Robot!

The one commonality behind all these worldviews is that they make "man the measure" of reality. Thus all are, in a sense, unreal. For finite man cannot be the measure of that of which he is "merely" a very part-time part and participant. In fact, the great German-American philosopher Eric Voegelin has convincingly (to me) argued that all such worldviews are actually examples of alienation from the universal order of the world. They betoken a resistance on the part of man to acceptance of the human condition as it actually is; rather they are projections of their adherent's desires and need for relief from acute existential anxiety....

You suggested that "only those ideas based on the principles explained in the Bible" actually work out in actual reality. You added, "I am not saying that all successful societies were based on the Bible but rather on the principles expressed in the Bible." Truly I agree with you here. On this point, we are not talking about "religion" at all. We are talking about the fundamental structure of reality, of what "works" and "doesn't work" in the universal order — physical and moral — that God made, Alpha to Omega. The Holy Scriptures are God's truthful (but not exhaustive) revelation to us of the order of the world He created. As such, they are preeminent to, and stand quite independently of religious dogmas of all descriptions.

I'll go even further and say that all the doctrines (worldviews) you mention are falsifications of Reality. And being that, they cannot work.

But a man like Richard Dawkins cannot grasp this point — for in his fulminating hatred of God and religion, he prohibits himself from even "going there." He prefers to be "a god" unto himself....

He is a fine example of Heraclitus' "dreamer," who rejects the Logos that is "one and common to all," withdrawing into into his own "private world" as if a man asleep, dreaming his dreams which are "no reality" at all.

Thank you so very much, dear MNR, for your most eloquent and insightful essay/post!

[betty boop]

The only way mammalian evolution is even possible is with heterosexuals.

LOLOL Francis Dashwood!!!

That goes without saying. :^)

Indeed, the position of homosexuals within evolutionary doctrine appears to be somewhat strange and complicated: If they can't/don't breed, how "fit" can they be?

Of course, Darwinism doesn't give a hoot about individuals, only species. But even on that score, it seems homosexuals aren't doing much for improved fitness and therefore survival of the human species....

Thanks so much for writing!