Posted on 11/03/2003 12:05:39 PM PST by Heartlander
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A Response to Eugenie Scott and the NCSE By William A. Dembski Discovery Institute November 1, 2003 |
| Originally published Oct. 10, 2003 Eugenie Scott’s letter of September 30, 2003 to members of the Texas State Board of Education purports to show that intelligent design research is not published in the peer-reviewed literature. But in fact, Scott has purposely failed to disclose certain key items of information which demonstrate that intelligent design research is in fact now part of the mainstream peer-reviewed scientific literature. I can substantiate the charge that Scott has purposely failed to disclose key information in this regard. Scott and I have met at several conferences and debates, and we correspond typically a few times a year by email. Here is a paragraph from an email she sent me on December 3, 2002 (in context, Scott is disparaging my work on intelligent design because, so she claims, it has not been cited in the appropriate peer-reviewed literature): “It would perhaps be more interesting (and something for you to take rather more pride in) if it were the case that the scientific, engineering, and mathematical applications of evolutionary algorithms, fuzzy logic and evolution, etc., referenced TDI or your other publications and criticisms. In a quick survey of a few of the more scholarly works, I didn’t see any, but perhaps you or someone else might know of them.” The abbreviation “TDI” here refers to my book The Design Inference (more about this book in a moment because Scott disparages it also in her letter of September 30, 2003). Now the fact is that this book has been cited in precisely the literature that Scott claims has ignored it. I pointed this out to her in an email dated December 6, 2002. Here is the key bibliographic reference, along with the annotation, that I sent her: Chiu, D.K.Y. and Lui, T.H. Integrated use of multiple interdependent patterns for biomolecular sequence analysis. International Journal of Fuzzy Systems. Vol.4, No.3, Sept. 2002, pp.766-775. The article begins: “Detection of complex specified information is introduced to infer unknown underlying causes for observed patterns [10]. By complex information, it refers to information obtained from observed pattern or patterns that are highly improbable by random chance alone. We evaluate here the complex pattern corresponding to multiple observations of statistical interdependency such that they all deviate significantly from the prior or null hypothesis [8]. Such multiple interdependent patterns when consistently observed can be a powerful indication of common underlying causes. That is, detection of significant multiple interdependent patterns in a consistent way can lead to the discovery of possible new or hidden knowledge.” Reference number [10] here is to The Design Inference. Not only does this article cite my work favorably, but it makes my work in The Design Inference the basis for the entire article. When I sent Scott this information by email, she never got back to me. Interestingly, though, she has since that exchange dropped a line of criticism that she had previously adopted; namely, she had claimed that intelligent design is unscientific because intelligent design research is not cited in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. There’s no question that it is cited (and favorably at that) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. What about actual intelligent design research being published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature? Scott doesn’t want to allow that my book The Design Inference properly belongs to this literature. In her letter of September 30, 2003, she remarks that this book “may have undergone a degree of editorial review” but it “did not undergo peer-review in the sense in which scientific research articles are peer-reviewed.” She then adds that The Design Inference “does not present scientific research -- Dembski’s book was published as a philosophy book.” Every one of these remarks is false. What’s more, their falsity is readily established. Editorial review refers to a book submitted to a publisher for which the editors, who are employees of the publisher and in the business of trying to acquire, produce, and market books that are profitable, decide whether or not to accept the book for publication. Editorial review may look to expert advice regarding the accuracy, merit, or originality of the book, but the decision to publish rests solely with the editors and publishers. Peer-review, on the other hand, refers to journal articles and academic monographs (these are articles that are too long to be published in a journal and which therefore appear in book form) that are submitted to referees who are experts in the topic being addressed and who must give a positive review of the article or monograph if it is to be published at all. The Design Inference went through peer-review and not merely editorial review. To see this, it is enough to note that The Design Inference was published by Cambridge University Press as part of a Cambridge monograph series: Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory. Scott doesn’t point this out in her letter of September 30, 2003 because if she had, her claim that my book being editorially reviewed but not peer-reviewed would have instantly collapsed. Academic monograph series, like the Cambridge series that published my book, have an academic review board that is structured and functions identically to the review boards of academic journals. At the time of my book’s publication, the review board for Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory included members of the National Academy of Sciences as well as one Nobel laureate, John Harsanyi, who shared the prize in 1994 with John Nash, the protagonist in the film A Beautiful Mind. As it is, The Design Inference had to pass peer-review with three anonymous referees before Brian Skyrms, who heads the academic review board for this Cambridge series, would recommend it for publication to the Cambridge University Press editors in New York. Brian Skyrms is on the faculty of the University of California at Irvine as well as a member of the National Academic of Sciences. It is easy enough to confirm what I’m saying here by contacting him. Scott either got her facts wrong or never bothered to check them in the first place. What about Scott’s claim that The Design Inference “does not present scientific research—Dembski’s book was published as a philosophy book.” It is true that Cambridge University Press officially lists this book as a philosophy monograph. But why should how the book is listed by its publisher be relevant to deciding whether it does or does not contain genuine scientific content? The Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) for The Design Inference is QA279.D455. As any mathematician knows, QA refers to mathematics and the 270s refer to probability and statistics. Is Scott therefore willing to accept that The Design Inference does present scientific research after all because the Library of Congress treats it as a mathematical and statistical monograph rather than as a philosophical monograph? How this book is listed is beside the point. I submit that the book makes a genuine contribution to the statistical literature, laying out in full technical detail a method of design detection applicable to biology. Scott can dispute this if she likes, but to do so she needs to engage the actual content of my book and not dismiss it simply because the publisher lists it one way or another. Also, it’s worth noting that up until I pointed out to her that The Design Inference is cited in the peer-reviewed mathematical and biological literature, her main line of argument against the scientific merit of my work was that it wasn’t being cited in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. As I showed above, this line of criticism is no longer tenable. I’ve discussed at length Scott’s treatment of my own work because this is where I’m best qualified to speak to the issue of peer review in relation to intelligent design. As for the other claims in her letter of September 30, 2003, let me briefly offer three remarks: **Discovery Institute is only the tip of the iceberg for scientists who support intelligent design. Intelligent design research is being published in precisely the places Scott claims it is not being published. What’s more, intelligent design has a developing research program. For some details, see the attached ID FAQ that I handed out on September 10, 2003 at the textbook hearings in Austin. It is also available on my website: http://www.designinference.com/documents/2003.09.ID_FAQ.pdf. **Scott’s charge that critics of Darwinian evolution, like me and my colleagues at Discovery Institute, “misquote” or “quote-mine” the work of scientists has degenerated into a slogan. As a slogan, its effect is to shut down discussion before it can get started. Scientists have no special privileges over anyone else. If they say things that are false, inaccurate, or stupid, they need to be called to account. Reasoned discourse in a free society demands that people, and that includes scientists, confront the record of their words. One can dispute what the words meant in context, but it is not enough merely to assert that the words were quoted out of context. **Finally, in her letter of September 30, 2003, Scott objects to my use of a statement she made in an interview with Salon. I am supposed to have implied that “Scott believes that textbooks should not discuss arguments about how evolution occurs.” She protests that she “was not discussing doubts about how evolution happened but rather doubts about whether evolution happened.” (Emphasis hers.) But if she really believes that there are many views of how evolution occurred, why does she and her lobbying group the NCSE support only one view on how evolution occurred, namely, the Darwinian view? Why, for instance, isn’t she demanding that the biology textbooks describe the controversy between neo-Darwinists (like John Maynard Smith) and self-organizational theorists (like Stuart Kauffman)? Neither disputes whether evolution has happened. Yet the self-organizational theorists strongly dispute that the Darwinian view adequately explains how evolution occurred. All the textbooks ignore the self-organizational challenge to Darwinism. If Scott is such a champion of pluralism concerning how evolution happened, why isn’t she pressing for the inclusion of self-organizational theory in the biology textbooks? Why do all her lobbying efforts promote neo-Darwinism as the only view of how evolution occurred that’s appropriate for the textbooks? I submit it is because, as she said in her Salon interview, to do otherwise will only “confuse kids about the soundness of evolution as a science.” In other words, to ensure that kids are not confused about whether evolution occurred, textbooks need to tell them only one story about how evolution occurred, namely, the Darwinian story. This isn’t education. It’s indoctrination. THREE FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT INTELLIGENT DESIGN Textbook Hearing, Austin, Texas, September 10, 2003 (available at www.designinference.com after September 10, 2003> by William A. Dembski What is intelligent design? Intelligent design is the science that studies how to detect intelligence. Recall astronomer Carl Sagan’s novel Contact about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (or SETI). Sagan based the SETI researchers’ methods of design detection on scientific practice. Real-life SETI researchers have thus far failed to detect designed signals from distant space. But if they encountered such a signal, as the astronomers in Sagan’s novel did, they too would infer design. Intelligent design research currently focuses on developing reliable methods of design detection and then applying these methods, especially to biological systems. Does research supporting intelligent design appear in the peer-reviewed literature? Here are a few recent peer-reviewed publications supporting intelligent design in biology. There is also a widely recognized peer-reviewed literature in physics and cosmology supporting intelligent design (see, for instance, the work of Paul Davies, Frank Tipler, Fred Hoyle, and Guillermo Gonzalez). • W.A. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1998). This book was published by Cambridge University Press and peer-reviewed as part of a distinguished monograph series, Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory. The editorial board of that series includes members of the National Academy of Sciences as well as one Nobel laureate, John Harsanyi, who shared the prize in 1994 with John Nash, the protagonist in the film A Beautiful Mind. Commenting on the ideas in this book, Paul Davies remarks: “Dembski’s attempt to quantify design, or provide mathematical criteria for design, is extremely useful. I’m concerned that the suspicion of a hidden agenda is going to prevent that sort of work from receiving the recognition it deserves. Strictly speaking, you see, science should be judged purely on the science and not on the scientist.” Quoted in L. Witham, By Design (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003), p. 149. • D.D. Axe, “Extreme Functional Sensitivity to Conservative Amino Acid Changes on Enzyme Exteriors,” Journal of Molecular Biology, 301 (2000): 585–595. This work shows that certain enzymes are extremely sensitive to perturbation. Perturbation in this case does not simply diminish existing function or alter function, but removes all possibility of function. This implies that neo-Darwinian theory has no purchase on these systems. Moreover, the probabilities implicit in such extreme-functional-sensitivity analyses are precisely those needed for a design inference. • W.-E. Loennig & H. Saedler, “Chromosome Rearrangements and Transposable Elements,” Annual Review of Genetics, 36 (2002): 389–410. This article examines the role of transposons in the abrupt origin of new species and the possibility of an partly predetermined generation of biodiversity and new species. The authors’ approach in non-Darwinian, and they cite favorably on the work of Michael Behe and William Dembski. • D.K.Y. Chiu & T.H. Lui, “Integrated Use of Multiple Interdependent Patterns for Biomolecular Sequence Analysis,” International Journal of Fuzzy Systems, 4(3) (September 2002): 766–775. The opening paragraph of this article reads: “Detection of complex specified information is introduced to infer unknown underlying causes for observed patterns [10]. By complex information, it refers to information obtained from observed pattern or patterns that are highly improbable by random chance alone. We evaluate here the complex pattern corresponding to multiple observations of statistical interdependency such that they all deviate significantly from the prior or null hypothesis [8]. Such multiple interdependent patterns when consistently observed can be a powerful indication of common underlying causes. That is, detection of significant multiple interdependent patterns in a consistent way can lead to the discovery of possible new or hidden knowledge.” Reference number [10] here is to William Dembski’s The Design Inference. • M.J. Denton & J.C. Marshall, “The Laws of Form Revisited,” Nature, 410 (22 March 2001): 417; M.J. Denton, J.C. Marshall & M. Legge, (2002) “The Protein Folds as Platonic Forms: New Support for the pre-Darwinian Conception of Evolution by Natural Law,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 219 (2002): 325–342. This research is thoroughly non-Darwinian and looks to laws of form embedded in nature to bring about biological structures. The intelligent design research program is broad, and design like this that’s programmed into nature falls within its ambit. What research topics does a design-theoretic research program explore?
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 Discovery Institute is a non-profit, non-partisan, public policy think tank headquartered in Seattle and dealing with national and international affairs. For more information, browse Discovery's Web site at: http://www.discovery.org. |
God will not be mocked, however. I don't know if He'll agree to participate in such a study.
Similarly, among the people prayed for and who recovered, were some of them "naturally" in better shape, merely because they were already healthy enough to be regularly attending church, had a large support group, etc.? It might be that a group of gregarious people and a group of sullen loners would exhibit wildly different health statistics, prayers or no prayers. In other words, it's difficult in such studies to avoid playing with a stacked deck.
When the day comes that He shows His power, there will be no unbelievers. Until then there is the testimony of believers such as I am: I have received and witnessed many miraculous healings which were requested by intercessory prayer - the common thread was faith.
Indeed, in any such formal study it must be much easier to collect the information than to understand it.
Personally, I suspect that prayer and its effects are not proper subjects for scientific investigation. I just don’t see how prayer can be “observed” – that is, made available to the scientific method. PatrickHenry pointed out some of the logistical problems, like how to construct a control group (or groups). I suppose such issues arise mainly due to the fact that one cannot subject something that is inherently immaterial to the techniques of scrutiny proper only to material, physical objects.
Neither view – “pro”- or “anti”-prayer – fails on logical grounds or is falsifiable on the basis of the scientific method; neither is internally logically inconsistent. They just happen to be mutually exclusive. And so it seems we are free to hold our “opinion” of the matter.
For what credentials does science have to be the key referee of this controversy? As an interested party, it cannot qualify as a fair judge.
Speaking of opinion, mine is that prayer and meditation are not only good for the soul, they are generally good for the world. Prayer is ever a loving approach to God in hopeful supplication that He will not fail to come to the aid of the suffering, the sick, the dying, the vulnerable; or people who could benefit from a blessing of “Godspeed” for a project or a purpose. Thus prayer is also indirectly a joining in fellowship with a wider human community. It seems to me that prayer spiritually benefits both the one who is prayed for, and the one who prays.
The fact that the prayed-for outcome may not materialize to our view does not establish that God has denied our prayer. It may be He fulfilled it in a way of which we are not aware, of which we cannot be aware.
It is for this reason that I always conclude a prayer with this expression of trust: “In all things, Lord, Thy will, not mine, be done.” I bow my head – I refer to -- the infinitely greater Divine love, wisdom, judgment, will, and purpose rather than defer to my own puny, mortal, fallible, and contingent wisdom, etc.
Prayer is an essential form of Hope, one of the three great Christian theological virtues, the other two being Faith and Charity (Love).
Under Faith and Love, Hope must express in a manner that encompasses our fellow human beings; hence, we pray out of concern for the well-being primarily of their souls, but also of the material conditions of their lives.
I just read Lance Morrow’s Evil: An Investigation (2003). It was a most provocative book. He propounds no theories – he just does what the subtitle suggests: He investigates. But he allows himself a speculation from time to time. One of them is that the opposite of Evil is not Good. The opposite of Evil is Hope. I liked that a lot.
So I imagine at the end of the day, having made such a “confession,” scientific materialists out there will have a great chuckle over my superstitious and quite ridiculous suppositions and myths.
What they may not realize is that I sometimes find myself chuckling over their superstitious and quite ridiculous suppositions and myths.
My favorite one these days is the theory of the “primaeval soup” out of which all biological life is said to have spontaneously arisen, out of the blind chemistry of inert matter, all on a random basis; and then organize itself for greater biological diversity and complexity on a random basis, under the guiding hand of the physical laws and Natural Selection.
In a nutshell, there are not a few problems with this theory, in light of recent discoveries/experiments in quantum physics, astrophysics, geology, microbiology, mathematics, probability theory, and information theory.
One big problem in another nutshell:
Haldane’s model of the “primaeval soup” and ensuing random evolution from inert matter to living organism was predicated on the assumption that the universe is eternal and infinite. If you have an infinite time for a stochastic process to work itself out, then anything and everything that does not violate the basic laws of physics will eventually happen. Including the evolution of species, presumably ever in the “progressive” direction of increasing survival fitness and genetic success.
But the Big Bang theory, almost universally accepted these days, kills this cosmology. No longer is there infinite time for a random process to work itself out, so to describe or account for the biological diversity that we see today.
As Dean Overman writes in A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization (2003):
“Haldane, Oparin and Wald wrote their papers at a time when the universe was believed to have no beginning or end and to be infinite in size. In an eternal, infinite universe, anything can happen. Data supporting the Big Bang theory from the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite and new discoveries in the geological records change the perspective of the time available for the emergence of life. The time available on earth is extremely limited. The earth began to form about 4.6 billion years ago. Radioactive decay, the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere, the production of thermal energy from the effects of gravity conversion, and crashing meteors made the surface of the earth sufficiently hot to make compounds of biological interest unstable for approximately 1.62 billion years. In other words, prior to 3.98 billion years ago, the earth was too torrid for the emergence of life. The fossil records, however, indicate that life formed on earth at least 3.85 billion years ago over a period of less than 130 million years….”
We turn now to calculations of the mathematical probability that unguided, random development accounts for the emergence of life from inert matter on earth, given the finite time limit of 130 million years in which random processes have to work.
Overman suggests how remote such probabilities have of actually reifying in nature in an apt analogy – the analogy of the Amazing Monkeys Who Type Out the Dialog from a Certain Scene in Shakespeare’s Henry VI -- who just manage to get it all right via a random process, given enough time:
“Assuming the Big Bang occurred 15 billion years ago and that one million monkeys started typing at Planck time (10^-43 of the first second) and that each monkey types one letter every second, over a million billion years would be required to produce all probable [alphabetic] combinations [to accurately type a certain passage from Macbeth, consisting of 379 letters]. To put time in terms of a power of 10, only 10^18 seconds have occurred in all of time. As with the time available for abiogenesis, the monkeys simply do not have sufficient time in 10^18 seconds to have any real chance of typing this short passage from Shakespeare [this probability has been calculated at 26^379 using combinatorial methods*]. When we turn to calculations of mathematical probabilities for the unguided, random development of life, we find odds that are even more remote, especially given the finite time limit of 130 million years.”
[*To put the probability figure cited in the paragraph immediately above into perspective, Overman notes most mathematicians view a probability of 10^50 as mathematically impossible.] Overman quotes Harold Morowitz on this issue:
“I think it is conservative to say that continuous life on Earth formed 3.8+/- 0.2 Ga (billion years) ago. This is not a precise estimate, but it places the event in the late Hadean or early Archean period, suggesting that as soon as the Earth cooled down sufficiently, life formed rapidly on a geological time scale. A less conservative estimate would be 3.9 +/- Ga ago – a very different view from the classical perspective involving random chemicals reacting for eons and finally lucking out, resulting in a living cell coming together. The thrust of narrowing the window in time is to shift the emphasis from low probability, random events to the deterministic production of living entities.”
Overman puts the question another way, noting “the simplest living cells such as bacteria are extraordinarily complex, containing many nucleic acids and enzymes and molecules, all comprised by thousands of atoms, all joined together in a precise sequence.” Fred Hoyle, an evolutionist (“though not a Darwinist”) and an atheist, noted the enormous statistical difficulty in accounting for the emergence of the simple bacterium from inorganic matter within the available time frame (i.e., 130 million years). Consider just what a staggering problem even the single-celled bacterium is for combinatorial stochastic analysis. Even assuming that “the first living cell was much simpler than today’s bacteria,” as Overman puts it, “[Hoyle’s] calculation for the likelihood of even one very simple enzyme arising at the right time in the right place was only one chance in 10^20 or 1 in 1000,000,000,000,000,000,000.”
Hoyle wrote:
“No matter how large the environment one considers, life cannot have had a random beginning… there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10^20)^2000 = 10^40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by scientific training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court… the enormous information content of even the simplest living systems … cannot in our view be generated by what are often called “natural” processes…. For life to have originated on the Earth it would be necessary that quite explicit instruction should have been provided for its assembly … There is no way in which we can simply get by with a bigger and better organic soup, as we ourselves hoped might be possible a year or two ago.”
To which his close collaborator Chandra Wickramasinghe added a pungent summary statement: “The chances that life just occurred are about as unlikely as a typhoon blowing through a junkyard and constructing a Boeing 747.”
Now it is true that Darwinism is “only” about the “origin of species,” as the title of his magnum opus indicates. It does not claim to account for the “origin of life.”
But logically, the first bacterium was the “origin” of that species. And on the evidence it appears that the emergence of the first simple, single-celled biological organism cannot have happened by means of a random process, proceeding from inert matter to “life” (a phenomenon apparently undefined and uninvestigated by Darwin) within the available time period.
So, how does Darwinist theory explain itself/maintain itself against such objections? Certainly there appears to be a whole lot more going on in this universe than just Natural Selection….
Think about it: Logically, ‘natural selection’ requires something from which to select. That means there’s a “there” there already.
Yet the theory seems to want to explain the problem of natural evolution of species, the rise in complexity, etc., etc., while leaving the problem of the origin or basis of life in total obscurity – resting blissfully on materialist ideology, and faith in the guiding (yet invisible) hand of materialist Natural Selection (which being a concept, is hardly a “material” thing…).
I have to leave it to the reader to figure out what this all means.
Meanwhile, I think I’ll go say my prayers now… starting with prayers for my boon friends, companions, and collaborators here at FR…. :^)
Thank you so much for writing, V-A, PH, Nebullis. Good night to all!
Features of genuine evolutionary scenarios:
What they may not realize is that I sometimes find myself chuckling over their superstitious and quite ridiculous suppositions and myths.
And I agree that the disciplines of mathematics - particularly information theory and geometry - combined with physics, cosmology and molecular biology - will eventually reformulate evolution theory.
IMHO, the first pillar - random mutations - is already in jeopardy because the lack of mutability in regulatory control genes points to autonomous biological self-organizing complexity as a better explanation, i.e. evolution is not a directionless walk.
The second pillar - natural selection - has been placed in doubt (Wolfram) in that natural selection more often works against such a mechanism than for it.
And that is without even looking at the syntactic autonomy required for abiogenesis (Rocha) or the underlying physics of life v non-life (Pattee) or the information content necessary to sustain biological life (Yockey).
Finally, all of these efforts are set in the context of our understanding of the universe or multi-verse (Tegmark, Penrose, Ovrut) - which has a beginning - and the astonishingly improbable physical laws of this universe (Rees) - and moreover, the geometry or dimensionality of all that there is (Vafa).
This is a very exciting time to be a spectator, both of science and of spirit!
Indeed, A-G, we do live in most exciting times!
I've just finished reading a wonderful book, by Dean L. Overman, A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1997). I enjoyed it so much, and I'd bet you'd like it, too. He quotes extensively from Yockey and Penrose, Hawking, many others. He points out that "order" and "complexity" are not synonyms, and elucidates the critical difference between them. By complexity, he means information content -- the minimum number of instructions necessary to specify and maintain a structure. So you can see information theory is very out front in Overman's analysis.
He writes, "Highly complex structures require many instructions. A structure may be highly ordered, such as a crystal, but contain very few instructions." Order displays pattern, sequence. Indeed, very simple instruction sets (and even chaos) have been observed to produce regular patterns. But highly complex structures -- such as DNA -- are nonperiodic, seemingly random sequences. DNA is "complex" in the way a crystal is not: Its complexity means it can encode an astronomically vast number of instructions/information content to specify its structure and realize its function.
Overman is also very keyed into issues in particle astrophysics. He wrote:
"Because the formation of life requires the formation of a universe compossible with life, the case against accident as an explanation for life is satisfied completely by an examination of the probabilities involved in the fine tuning of particle astrophysics without regard to issues raised by molecular biology. When one couples the probabilities in physics against an accidental universe compossible with life with the molecular biological and pre-biological possibilities against the formation of the first form of life from inert matter, the compounded calculation wipes the idea of accident entirely out of court."
The statement comes in the book's conclusion. It seems to have been thoroughly well argued and documented throughout.
Of course, there are things that cannot be known for a certainty. Most cases, we have to be satisfied with the standard, "beyond a reasonable doubt." I think Overman makes an persuasive case against life arising by accident; but I'll be checking his thesis against future developments, new evidence, new discoveries....
Just "thinking out loud" through some of Overman's ideas here, A-G. Thanks for letting me rant! You've got to read this book!
It seems whenever we start speaking of complexity, order, randomness, chaos, probability and entropy the conversation tends to get caught up in a quagmire of definitions.
I certainly agree with the author’s measure of complexity – which roughly corresponds to the Chaitin/Kolmogorov view that complexity can be measured as the size of smallest program which will produce the subject string.
Sadly, there is a tendency around here to dismiss the importance of Shannon entropy to biological information content. Instructions flow through biological systems like communications between devices and thus, Shannon is very relevant in my view. Shannon entropy is roughly the uncertainty of that flow, the successful flow is information.
Likewise, when we speak of order there seems to be a tendency here to observe that when the universe dissolves in the end, it will have achieved both maximum entropy and greatest order. That is an interesting observation but it doesn’t really tell us much about order in biological systems.
Randomness raises the same kind of issue. For instance, both pi and Chaitin’s Omega will generate a string which – if you were to select a chunk of it at a respectable distance – would appear to be random. In the case of pi that impression would be false. In the case of Omega after a certain number of positions, that impression would be true.
Or would it? … since in both cases, the number itself is a derivation of algorithm and thus, not random. I believe this is Wolfram’s counter-point, i.e. that all randomness is only pseudo-randomness.
Indeed, on closer inspection (especially in alternative bases) - most candidate number generating algorithms have a high degree of auto-correlation.
The order and complexity of biological information content is frankly stunning. But if the greater the entropy, the higher the order, then the less the opportunity for complexity. On its own then, complexity can only form in lower entropy, higher chaos. But is that rational? IOW, for a metaphysical naturalist explanation to prevail it must have gone from chaos to complexity to order to entropy to more chaos, more complexity, more order, more entropy and so on.
In sum, if the initial conditions are not random - indeed, if there is no randomness apart from pseudo-randomness - then the metaphysical naturalism theory of origins fails.
The counter to actual randomness around here has been the Brownian motion, but that (like pi and Omega) is an effect and not a cause, i.e. the consequence of ongoing bombardment by atoms and molecules.
The only defense the metaphysical naturalists have to this is the plenitude argument – everything that can exist does, in some parallel universe.
Even for the die-hards who hold on to the hope of plenitude, they are nevertheless stuck with a beginning – and for that, they have no defense!
The patients were divided randomly, no one knew who was gettting the extra prayers and who wasn't.
I suppose such issues arise mainly due to the fact that one cannot subject something that is inherently immaterial to the techniques of scrutiny proper only to material, physical objects.
They just did, didn't they?
Neither view – “pro”- or “anti”-prayer – fails on logical grounds or is falsifiable on the basis of the scientific method; neither is internally logically inconsistent. They just happen to be mutually exclusive. And so it seems we are free to hold our “opinion” of the matter.
It was tested as best as we can, and failed. Maybe God is into something like the so-called 'shyness effect' in parapsychology (PK, remote viewing, etc, just don't seem to work in the presence of skeptics, especially those who know how to detect fraud), or maybe prayer doesn't have any effect on healing.
For what credentials does science have to be the key referee of this controversy? As an interested party, it cannot qualify as a fair judge.
Then find some one else, not scientists, to set up a double blind experiment, or some other protocol that eliminates the placebo effect. Amazing Randi, perhaps, though I don't think this is his sort of thing.
Speaking of opinion, mine is that prayer and meditation are not only good for the soul, they are generally good for the world .... Thus prayer is also indirectly a joining in fellowship with a wider human community. It seems to me that prayer spiritually benefits both the one who is prayed for, and the one who prays.
IMO, it's probably good for the person doing it, as is meditation. I doubt it has any effect whatsoever on others.
I really can't comment on theological speculations but there's some truth to "The opposite of Evil is Hope. I liked that a lot.", I think.
My favorite one these days is the theory of the “primaeval soup” out of which all biological life is said to have spontaneously arisen, out of the blind chemistry of inert matter, all on a random basis; and then organize itself for greater biological diversity and complexity on a random basis, under the guiding hand of the physical laws and Natural Selection.
This is basically the Haldane-Oparin hypothesis from 1924. A quarter century before the genetic code was discovered.
Haldane’s model of the “primaeval soup” and ensuing random evolution from inert matter to living organism was predicated on the assumption that the universe is eternal and infinite.
Cite, please. Even before Hubble, the Earth (if not the entire Universe) was thought to have a finite age, measured in the millions or billions of years. (the ancient Earth is in fact one of Darwin's correct predictions)
In a nutshell, there are not a *few* problems with this theory, in light of recent discoveries/experiments in quantum physics, astrophysics, geology, microbiology, mathematics, probability theory, and information theory.
Quantum Physics has a bearing on origin-of-life studies!? (beyond chemical effects) Cite, please.
recent discoveries in mathematics, probability theory, and information theory?! Which ones?
Astrophysics?! Again, cite please.
But the Big Bang theory, almost universally accepted these days, kills this cosmology. No longer is there infinite time for a random process to work itself out, so to describe or account for the biological diversity that we see today.
Again, please find me someone who said infinite time was necessary. Or that the Earth was infinitely old.
Assuming the Big Bang occurred 15 billion years ago and that one million monkeys started typing at Planck time (10^-43 of the first second) and that each monkey types ...[blah]... million billion years would be required ... [blah]...As with the time available for abiogenesis,
The monkey analogy is utterly irrelevent.
...the monkeys simply do not have sufficient time ... When we turn to calculations of mathematical probabilities for the unguided, random development of life, we find odds that are even more remote, especially given the finite time limit of 130 million years.”
Really? He should show his work.
Overman notes most mathematicians view a probability of 10^50 as mathematically impossible
I'd like a cite on this one, too. Of course it's a very low probabliity, but who came up wth the 50? Sounds a bit like Dembski and his non-peer-reviewed speculations.
Overman puts the question another way, noting “the simplest living cells such as bacteria are extraordinarily complex, containing many nucleic acids and enzymes and molecules, all comprised by thousands of atoms, all joined together in a precise sequence.” Fred Hoyle,...are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10^20)^2000 = 10^40,000,
Hoyle's calculation is right. Therefore it didn't happen according to the model on which it was based.
... typhoon blowing through a junkyard and constructing a Boeing 747..
Is there any evidence that Hoyle and Wickramasinghe ever gave any serious thought to the origin of life? Remember, they claimed that flu viruses came from outer space, a claim that has been refuted by evidence.
And on the evidence it appears that the emergence of the first simple, single-celled biological organism cannot have happened by means of a random process
How about nonrandom processes, like natural selection acting on the prebiotic molecules?
proceeding from inert matter to “life” (a phenomenon apparently undefined and uninvestigated by Darwin)
He thought about it, but here wasn't enough known about biochameistry to get past his famous quote (paraphrasing) " a little pond with ammonia and phosphate.."
So, how does Darwinist theory explain itself/maintain itself against such objections?
In large part, by showing they're specious.
Certainly there appears to be a whole lot more going on in this universe than just Natural Selection….
Think about it: Logically, ‘natural selection’ requires something from which to select. That means there’s a “there” there already.
Like prebiotic organic replicators?
Yet the theory seems to want to explain the problem of natural evolution of species, the rise in complexity, etc., etc., while leaving the problem of the origin or basis of life in total obscurity
No, it's just a different study than evolution, more biochemical than biological. Also, we have no real knowledge of the stages mattter went throgh as it evolved into something recognizable as life. Was there an RNA world? What preceded it? There may be no evidence at all left about such things.
– resting blissfully on materialist ideology, and faith in the guiding (yet invisible) hand of materialist Natural Selection (which being a concept, is hardly a “material” thing…).
This doesn't make sense to me. What ideology? Why should a process like natural selection have any of the attributes of a material thing? More to the point, once there are imperfect replicators and some sort of competition, how can natural selection be prevented?
I have to leave it to the reader to figure out what this all means.
Amen
When asked "How's your wife?" a long-ago comedian (Henny Youngman?) used to say: "Compared to what?"
Which [cleverly] leads me to question how you arrive at your "stunningly improbable" conclusion. I'll give you an example of what prompts my question. Let's say the lottery in your state has arithmetical odds against a particular numerical sequence of 50 million to one. Fine. Let's say you win. Great for you! Nothing supernatural about it. Someone's always winning. After all, some combination of numbers comes up every week. We agree that your winning is no miracle. Now let's suppose you win again. And a week later you win again. And then again! Now that's "stunningly improbable" enough to trigger an investigation.
Anyway, in concluding that your streak of wins is "stunningly improbable," we have some understanding of the genuine odds involved, how many players there are, etc. We have experience with lotteries, week after week. We know something of which we speak. But -- here comes my point -- when it comes to universes, we know nothing but this one. So how can anyone conclude that it's "stunningly improbable"? Compared to what? Given the data we have, it may just as well be stunningly inevitable.
By the way, I think that either conclusion about the universe (improbable or inevitable) is consistent with divine creation. I have no ax to grind there, and that's not what prompts my response. I'm genuinely curious about the "stunningly improbable" conclusion. Personally, I just don't see it.
A bit more on this (I hope you can put up with me). If the universe, and life, were really "stunningly improbable," then this brings to mind a deity that interferes continuously with the natural order of things (whatever that might be) in order to bring about this "stunningly improbable" universe in which we find ourselves. When I think of a continuously interfereing deity, I can't help coming up with this kind of image:
Now this "Charlie Chaplin Modern Times" kind of deity, running around flipping switches, pulling handles, turning dials, adjusting mixtures of chemicals, tweaking relationships, etc., may be just what it takes to generate a "stunningly improbable" universe. It seems that way to me, but I don't know. My personal opinion is that a universe where things just had to turn out this way, complete with life, consciousness, intelligence, and free will, is a far more elegant, even sublime creation, than a Rube Goldberg situation that requires constant attention.
So, for what it's worth (don't tell me), I suspect that this universe, and life, and everything, isn't "stunningly improbable" at all.
The Universe is unlikely. Very unlikely. Deeply, shockingly unlikely.
"It's quite fantastic," says Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, waving a hand through the steam rising from his salmon-and-potato casserole...
In his newest book, Just Six Numbers, Rees argues that six numbers underlie the fundamental physical properties of the universe, and that each is the precise value needed to permit life to flourish. In laying out this premise, he joins a long, intellectually daring line of cosmologists and astrophysicists (not to mention philosophers, theologians, and logicians) stretching all the way back to Galileo, who presume to ask: Why are we here? As Rees puts it, "These six numbers constitute a recipe for the universe." He adds that if any one of the numbers were different "even to the tiniest degree, there would be no stars, no complex elements, no life." ...
Faced with such overwhelming improbability, cosmologists have offered up several possible explanations. The simplest is the so-called brute fact argument. "A person can just say: 'That's the way the numbers are. If they were not that way, we would not be here to wonder about it,' " says Rees. "Many scientists are satisfied with that." Typical of this breed is Theodore Drange, a professor of philosophy at the University of West Virginia, who claims it is nonsensical to get worked up about the idea that our life-friendly universe is "one of a kind." As Drange puts it, "Whatever combination of physical constants may exist, it would be one of a kind."
Rees objects, drawing from an analogy given by philosopher John Leslie. "Suppose you are in front of a firing squad, and they all miss. You could say, 'Well, if they hadn't all missed, I wouldn't be here to worry about it.' But it is still something surprising, something that can't be easily explained. I think there is something there that needs explaining."
Meanwhile, the numbers' uncanny precision has driven some scientists, humbled, into the arms of the theologians. "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine," contends Vera Kistiakowsky, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But Rees offers yet another explanation, one that smacks of neither resignation nor theology. Drawing on recent cosmology- especially the research of Stanford University physicist Andrei Linde and his own theories about the nature of the six numbers- Rees proposes that our universe is a tiny, isolated corner of what he terms the multiverse.
The idea is that a possibly infinite array of separate big bangs erupted from a primordial dense-matter state. As extravagant as the notion seems, it has nonetheless attracted a wide following among cosmologists. Rees stands today as its champion. "The analogy here is of a ready-made clothes shop," says Rees, peeling his dessert, a banana. "If there is a large stock of clothing, you're not surprised to find a suit that fits. If there are many universes, each governed by a differing set of numbers, there will be one where there is a particular set of numbers suitable to life. We are in that one."
A review of the book to name the six numbers:
So what are the six numbers? One is the number of dimensions we live in: three. The rest are, at least at first sight, more obscure. For the record, they are N, the ratio of the strength of gravity to that of electromagnetism; epsilon, the ratio of mass lost to energy when hydrogen is fused to form helium; Omega, describing the amount of dark matter; lambda, the cosmological constant; and Q, related to the scale at which the universe looks smooth.
There are quite a few constants in physics which have values that look to have been plucked out of thin air, seemingly with no reference to anything else. It is interesting to see how a small change in one or other of them would make life totally impossible on Earth, or anywhere else in the universe. It almost seems as though the laws of physics themselves are precisely 'tuned' so as to favour the appearance of life somewhere...
Gravity. Suppose gravity was stronger or weaker than it is.
Make gravity substantially weaker on the other hand, the gas clouds of hydrogen and helium left after the Big Bang would never manage to collapse in an expanding universe, once again leaving no opportunity for life to emerge
It is also the hydrogen bond which is responsible for the crystalline structure of ice, which is in the form of an open lattice: this makes ice less dense than the liquid. As a result, ice floats. If ice was denser than its liquid form (as is the case with most other substances) then it would collect at the bottom of lakes and oceans, and eventually build up until the world was frozen solid. As it is, it forms a thin insulating sheet which prevents evaporation and keeps the waters below warm.
However, the efficiencies of nuclear reactions vary as a function of energy, and at certain critical levels a reaction rate can increase sharply - this is called resonance. It just so happens that there is a resonance in the three-helium reaction at the precise thermal energy corresponding to the core of a star...
So if there was another resonance at work here all the carbon would be quickly processed into oxygen, making carbon very rare again. In fact, it turns out that there is an excited state of oxygen-16 that almost allows a resonant reaction, but it is too low by just 1%. It is shifted just far enough away from the critical energy to leave enough life-giving quantities of carbon untouched.
An increase in the strong force of just 9% would have made the dineutron possible. On the other hand a decrease of about 31% would be sufficient to make the deuteron unstable, and so remove an essential step in the chain of nucleosynthesis: the Universe would contain nothing but hydrogen, and again life would be impossible.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01o.html
When all of these factors occur together, they create a region of space that Gonzalez calls a "Galactic Habitable Zone." Gonzalez believes every form of life on our planet - from the simplest bacteria to the most complex animal - owes its existence to the balance of these unique conditions.
Because of this, states Gonzalez, "I believe both simple life and complex life are very rare, but complex life, like us, is probably unique in the observable Universe."
2. Plentitude – everything that can exist, does in some multi-verse (Rees)
3. Anthropic Principle – without the right kind of physics, you don’t get physicists (PatrickHenry)
As a #1 – I consider #3 to be giving up. Conversely, as a #3 you might consider #1 to be giving up. But perhaps we can both agree that #2 ought to be pursued?
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