The AP Model and Shannon Theory Show the Incompleteness of Darwin’s ToE

self | January 26, 2009 | Jean F. Drew

[spirited irish]

hosepipe said, “WRONG.. the wreckage is because of socialism not gnostism..
Jesus never used the word or even the meme of heresy..
Heresy is a mental construct of the Sheep Pens..(John ch 10)..

Spirited: Paul tells us that ultimately, there are but two spiritual foundations on which every religion throughout time and around the world are based. He describes these two foundations like this, “Either you will worship and serve creation, or you will worship and serve the living Creator of creation.

The latter is of course, the worldview foundation on which Christendom and later on America were based. The former is monism, which like a coin has two sides: materialism and pantheism. On that foundation rest all ‘pagan-monist’ worldview systems and their subsequent civilizations.

One of the most fundamental answers supplied by worldview is to the question: “What is man?” Depending on the answer, there will arise a moral, cultural, and socio-economic system.

As we look around our world we can’t help but notice the utter misery under which very large numbers of people live in animist-pantheist civilizations, like India, for example. Symbolically, India’s civilization is pyramid shaped with the smallest, highest caste at the top and in descending order,the lowest, largest castes occupying perhaps the lower half or more. This dreadful system exists because the pantheist view of man is so debased.

Socialism-communism is in reality, a pyramid shaped cultural, socio-economic system based on an equally—if not more so— debased view of man-—a neo-pagan/gnostic view of man.

On an ideological level we say the wreckage is because of socialism. But at the deepest level of meaning, the cause of the wreckage is spiritual-—spiritual disease. And the descriptive word used to describe and categorize this spiritual disease is gnosticism.

[Diamond]

I see Dawkins is trying to use there model to argue against the designer

Which he can never seem to to do without using inappropriate teleological language, like comparing DNA to a computer code:

‘In a message that is totally free of redundancy, after there’s been an error there is no means of reconstructing what was intended. Computer codes often incorporate deliberately redundant ‘parity bits’ to aid in error detection. DNA, too, has various error-correcting procedures which depend upon redundancy. ...'

Dawkins is apparently able to leap gigantic logical chasms in a single bound. Just once I would like to him explain exactly how he gets 'error-detection' and "error correction" where there is NO TARGET; "what was intended" where there is NO INTENT; and 'codes' where there is NO CODER.

He can't even discuss these things without using the language of design. If teleological language were profanity, every other word of Dawkins would be bleeped out.

Cordially,

[Diamond]

I see Dawkins is trying to use there model to argue against the designer

Which he can never seem to to do without using inappropriate teleological language, like comparing DNA to a computer code:

‘In a message that is totally free of redundancy, after there’s been an error there is no means of reconstructing what was intended. Computer codes often incorporate deliberately redundant ‘parity bits’ to aid in error detection. DNA, too, has various error-correcting procedures which depend upon redundancy. ...'

Dawkins is apparently able to leap gigantic logical chasms in a single bound. Just once I would like to him explain exactly how he gets 'error-detection' and "error correction" where there is NO TARGET; "what was intended" where there is NO INTENT; and 'codes' where there is NO CODER.

He can't even discuss these things without using the language of design. If teleological language were profanity, every other word of Dawkins would be bleeped out.

Cordially,

[hosepipe]

[ On an ideological level we say the wreckage is because of socialism. But at the deepest level of meaning, the cause of the wreckage is spiritual-—spiritual disease. And the descriptive word used to describe and categorize this spiritual disease is gnosticism. ]

One must be careful of ones "knowing" a deeper "knowing"..
Cause they might not know as much as they think they do..
Most parents of children eventually learn this.. some do not..
The parents that do not, think they have the smartest kids..

[CottShop]

[[The parents that do not, think they have the smartest kids.. ]]

Ah but in my parent’s case, they were spot on right...

[[The parents that do not, think they have the most handsome kids.. ]]

Again. spot on right...

My little world is very warm and fuzzy...

[CottShop]

[[Dawkins is apparently able to leap gigantic logical chasms in a single bound.]]

So isn’t Ken Miller- infact, they apparently compete to see who can make the longest chasm leaps.

[[Which he can never seem to to do without using inappropriate teleological language, like comparing DNA to a computer code:]]

Miller also has to always appeal to designed preassembled models in order to twist and manipulate his hypothesis’ when tryign to describe how somethign liek IC blood clotting ‘could arise naturally’.

Even Nat Geo has to leap incredible chasms when ‘describing’ how species evilved- My assessment of hte hsow last night showed they left out HUGE chunks of informaiton, deceitfully leavign the audience in the dark about the FACTS real implicaitons and interpretations. The show that followed ‘When whales walked’ was even worse when it came to huge chasm-like gaps- infact biological impossibilities that simply took common descent for granted.

[hosepipe]

[ Ah but in my parent’s case, they were spot on right... ]

LoL... Mee Too... {cleaning glasses} me too..

[YHAOS]

”It was during the initial Trotsky-Lenin-Stalin regime that Nassene teachings were forcefully implemented. Divore and abortion were made easily attainable, the traditional family was forcefully attacked and almost destroyed, millions of children became wards of the ‘Mother-Father State,’ attacks were launched against the Biblical two-sex dichotomy with the intention of making androgyny the ‘new-norm.’ Churches and cathedrals were blasphemed, some became temples of atheism, and thousands of clergy were crucified-—literally.”

A Once and Future. Both history and the shape of things to come.

Rather spooky considering the number of your post,

[CottShop]

Molecular biologist Michael Denton, writing as a non-creationist skeptic of Darwinian evolution, explains what is involved:

Perhaps in no other area of modern biology is the challenge posed by the extreme complexity and ingenuity of biological adaptations more apparent than in the fascinating new molecular world of the cell… To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity.

Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which—a functional protein or gene—is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man? Alongside the level of ingenuity and complexity exhibited by the molecular machinery of life, even our most advanced artifacts appear clumsy…

It would be an illusion to think that what we are aware of at present is any more than a fraction of the full extent of biological design. In practically every field of fundamental biological research ever-increasing levels of design and complexity are being revealed at an ever-accelerating rate.[13]

For natural selection (differential reproduction) to start, there must be at least one self-reproducing entity. But as shown above, the production of even the simplest cell is beyond the reach of undirected chemical reactions. So it’s not surprising that Teaching about Evolution omits any discussion of the origin of life... [TRUEORIGIN]

Cracks knuckles and waits for the 'Blah blah blah he quote mined' comments- when I really only posted this particular quote to point out, and give a visual of, how incredibly complex even a 'simple cell' really is, and to make hte point that even at the molecular level, there are intricacies and complexities far far beyond what we imagined which all take a higher level of metainfo to control, and simpyl can't come from simple chemicals.- thought it was just a neat statement that gives soem kind of idea just how intrictely connected and complex everythign really is, even right down to the 'simplest' examples in life. One htne begins to wonder if the 'simplest' is this complicated and itnerdependent, just how many billions of years are needed for even this 'simplistic' evolution to occure and accumulate such info? Let alone trillions of higher and higher complxities as species supposedly evolved via mistakes?

[Alamo-Girl]

Humans basic arrogance can/could assume all things happens on a scale of fleshly reality..

That is the most common error IMHO: that that which is physical is all that there is, i.e. the extent of "reality."

[Alamo-Girl]

Its a wonderful thing.. Pure genius actually.. After fully being sorted and convinced indoctrinated and settled, comfortable and relaxed in a sheep pen.. denying their selection(choice) would be hard to do..

At the root, it answers the question "who did you believe?"

[CottShop]

Let’s not forget htough that the spirit listeth where it will- There may be many pens within pens, and people may have become comfortable i ntheir own pens, but the psirit works where it will- We each have a unique calling and are placed where we are for specific purposes that are not immediately obvious to us.

[Alamo-Girl]

The further I read- the more profound this issue becomes- This evaluation on the part of hte sender really, very strongly, indicates, once again, that an intelligent agent causation foreknew the reciever woudl need an ‘intelligent’ sender which could anticipate how hte reciever would receive the message, and how it would react- ie: It doesn’t just simpyl send hte message, it also takes into account how hte receiver will interprete the message, and what actions the receiver will likely take when the message is received.

Precisely so!

This is the point that betty boop and I keep trying to drive home on threads involving "information theory and molecular biology."

Shannon's theory is about communications. It involves all of the elements: message, sender, encoding, channel, noise, decoding and receiver.

Under the Shannon model, information is the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in the receiver (or molecular machine) as it goes from a before state to an after state. It is the successful communication, not any particular element of it.

Dawkins - and ever so many others - want to cherry-pick from Shannon's model and decree what information "is." When we let them to get away with it, they change the focus of the debate to one of the elements - typically the message itself.

But when a person realizes the full import of Shannon's model to molecular biology - he will surely understand (as evidenced in Diamond's excerpt) - that all of the elements have to be there at the same point in time for communications to occur. And even then, it takes an event - like a desire arising in the sender to inform the receiver of something - to initiate a communication.

A message, sender, receiver, coding system (language, semiosis) or channel just sitting there does not accomplish a communication.

By some initiation event the sender has a message to transmit in order to reduce uncertainty in the receiver. It is purposeful. It is teleological per se.

Truly, the receiver must be prepared to receive the message, both must speak the same language (encoding/decoding) - and the medium (channel) of the transmission must be autonomous to the communication (that sender, that receiver) to cope with the noise.

BTW, betty boop and I have categorized the initiation events to these three types: 1) interrupt, something happens in the environment - like food to an anthrax spore, or the movement of a mouse on a PC, 2) cycle, an interval of time, a pinging or rhythm like a heart beat, and most importantly, 3) an act of will - such as a bird choosing to fly away when released from the top of a building (instead of unwillingly going "splat".)

Certainly, the Shannon model - being mathematics could care less the meaning of the message. For instance, the formula for the area of a rectangle doesn't change with the size or composition of it.

But of a truth, meaning is the point of the communication to both sender and receiver! Communications is purposeful.

The likes of Dawkins get tunnel-visioned on the information content of the received message. And no doubt atheism and naturalism deny purpose in nature as an article of faith. But the point of Shannon is that all the elements must be there, at the same time - and there must be an initiation.

It is also obvious that any "thing" which cannot communicate is not alive - and that any "thing" which can no longer communicate is dead.

When some of us Christians see Shannon's theory applied to molecular biology it is obvious that life could not emerge by happenstance, i.e. without God. It is also obvious that life need not be restricted to the physical, i.e. spiritual life, we are dead and alive with Christ in God (Col 3:3)

[Alamo-Girl]

We each have a unique calling and are placed where we are for specific purposes that are not immediately obvious to us.

So very true. I would that every Christian would be ever aware of that. Perhaps then there would be less yelling over the fences.

Praise God!!!

[hosepipe]

[ "who did you believe?" ]

True.. some minds imagine things other minds do not..
What the mind imagines or conceives of can limit what you believe..
-or- enlarge what the spirit can merge with..

Ideas or concepts seem to radiate from the imagination..
from images of what is possible.. probable.. or practical..

How much we need the Holy Spirit with visions of greater things..
Could be the imagination is spiritual not fleshly..
With spiritual images of spiritual things..

[Alamo-Girl]

I don't see imagination as physical either - though no doubt there are some who use their (non-physical) imagination to construct a (non-physical) "second reality" - which is based on their (non-physical) hope that the physical is all that there is. Ironic, eh?!

Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!

[betty boop]

The likes of Dawkins get tunnel-visioned on the information content of the received message. And no doubt atheism and naturalism deny purpose in nature as an article of faith. But the point of Shannon is that all the elements must be there, at the same time — and there must be an initiation.

In short, biological functions (which are by definition purposeful, in that the function exists to secure a biological end or goal) that depend on successful communication of information (which seems to be all biological functions, including those at the level of single-celled entities) cannot be the product of an evolutionary development based on random mutation/natural selection (i.e., a gradualist, step-by-step process). Rather, evolutionary development is “drawn” from an information source, e.g., Williams’ concept of inversely-causal meta-information. If there is an information source, then it follows that its “information” is purposeful.

And yet the natural sciences nowadays refuse to grapple with teleology, with the idea that nature is “purposeful.” Here’s an interesting observation that helps provide perspective from a(n) (in)famous scientist whose name is associated with the ID “movement”:

Centuries ago nascent modern science took a crucial step. Breaking at last with the old Aristotelian thinking, it would no longer consider nebulous “final causes” in its explanations. Whether the ultimate purpose of, say, a mountain was to display the grandeur of God or something else could not be decided by an investigation of nature. Henceforth such questions would be relegated to philosophy or theology. Science would deliberately confine itself to issues about the mechanics of nature, and ignore issues of purpose. What a horse or a river or star is “for” would trouble science no longer.

At the time it seemed like a prudent course of action. Yet the simplistic division of labor was doomed from the start, because some parts of nature quite clearly are “for” identifiable things. Science wished to explain the mechanics of nature apart from purpose, but especially in biology the mechanics themselves often cannot be understood apart from purpose. The “function” of a mountain may not be decidable, but the function of a wing surely is. The purpose of a horse might be obscure, but the purpose of a horse’s eye is not.

Biologists of course realized this. Only when Darwin seemed to provide a non-purposive explanation for apparent purpose could life itself be accommodated within the new framework. Biology was the last scientific discipline to come fully under the sway of non-Aristotelian, mechanistic thinking. Subsequently biologists continued to think and speak of aspects of life in terms of purpose, but only with the (usually implicit) understanding that is was merely apparent purpose. Although over the years many scientists acting as individuals concluded that purpose was real, “official” biology self-consciously restricted itself to considering only non-purposive explanations for the origin of the apparently purposeful systems of life.

I argue that this state of affairs is no longer tenable. Although for convenience humans may carve up intellectual pursuits into various academic disciplines, reality is not obliged to respect such boundaries. In order to come to grips with the real world — in order to arrive at true explanations — rationality demands that we abjure artificial distinctions when their usefulness appears to have reached its limit. Rather, in proposing explanations for nature we must use all of the data and all of the experience we have available. The end result of stubborn adherence to a simplistic division of nature into discoverable mechanics and undiscoverable purpose, I say, is nothing less than the official divorce of science from reason.
— Michael Behe, “When Science Renounces a Facet of Reason,” Divine Action and Natural Selection, Singapore: World Scientific, 2009, p. 709f Emphasis added.

Thus Darwinists say purpose [teleology] in nature is only apparent, not real. Just as Dawkins says, when having to account for the obvious presence of design in nature, that this is not really design, but merely apparent design; he terms entities displaying this (to him fictional) quality as “designoids.”

Just a couple observations. It is only by denying all consideration of teleology in physical nature that can man be “fully integrated” into the Darwinian biological picture. Of course, the denial of teleology in nature also means that man as a part of nature cannot be a self-conscious, goal-directed, intelligent actor in nature. And thus an extraordinarily important distinction regarding the actuality of the human person is lost thereby. And with it any recognition, let alone justification, of human free will.

The thought has occurred to me that the “real battle” between Darwinian evolution theory and ID is not being conducted on the grounds the Darwinists allege. They have skewed the debate by asserting that what ID is really all about is religious proselytization under the cover of science by those nefarious IDers, who are really only Bible-thumping, right-wing Christian fundamentalist kooks trying to smuggle Creationism (i.e., God) into the science classroom.

It's funny that folks who would say that purpose in nature is only illusory could be so very confident about the definiteness and actuality of purpose they ascribe to their "adversaries," i.e., anyone who advances the proposition that intelligent design is a legitimate scientific hypothesis. (As if Darwinists never have purposes of their own.)

But I think the “real battle” is about whether final causes ought to be reintroduced into scientific thinking or not. Obviously, the Darwinists are saying “absolutely not.” The IDers are saying, “if you don’t, science becomes increasingly irrational and counterproductive.”

One last thought, re: “initiation” of biological messages. I thought Fr. Coyne’s discussion of the distinctions between “creation” and “origin” (quoted in an earlier post of mine) provides an excellent framework under which to consider this aspect of the problem. As you’ll recall, Coyne does not regard “creation” as having been only a one-time, start-up event that got the whole universe going “in the beginning,” but as the on-going universal requirement of biological existence itself. In other words, existent things are such only because they are constantly participating in Being. That is, biological life is contingent on Being — which is divine. Christians would call this: Divine Providence. I’ll say no more about this here, but just offer it as “food for thought.”

Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for your excellent essay/post!

[hosepipe]

Yes.. the irony is pregnant..
Both can be real, denying one sphere as improbable between corporeal vs. non corporeal.. must have an agenda..

[betty boop]

What the mind imagines or conceives of can limit what you believe.

On the other hand, there is the view that what the mind can imaginatively conceive may well constitute a possibility for nature.

Sigh. These problems are so ticklish: Human experience testifies to the validity of both statements. So then each would be "true" in some way, some context.... Certainly I don't see a necessary "either/or situation" here.

What I do see is that some relation between mind and world obtains in nature. The details of this mystery have yet to be unraveled.

[hosepipe]

[ What I do see is that some relation between mind and world obtains in nature. The details of this mystery have yet to be unraveled. ]

Human sensory organs may not be able to gauge reality correctly.. except in the lesser/lower dimensions.. Could be there is much more to "see" and "hear" and even "feel" than the human body can experience.. The human experience seems to be so lineal.. even two dimensional..

If we cannot deal with a two dimensional experience or even three dimensional one.. greater dimensions might not be appreciated.. The human experience might be a test.. a test of the spirit not of the flesh.. The vet "us" for future deeds/tasks..