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

self | January 26, 2009 | Jean F. Drew

[betty boop]

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

By Jean F. Drew

“The commonly cited case for intelligent design appeals to: (a) the irreducible complexity of (b) some aspects of life. But complex arguments invite complex refutations (valid or otherwise), and the claim that only some aspects of life are irreducibly complex implies that others are not, and so the average person remains unconvinced. Here I use another principle—autopoiesis (self-making)—to show that all aspects of life lie beyond the reach of naturalistic explanations. Autopoiesis provides a compelling case for intelligent design in three stages: (i) autopoiesis is universal in all living things, which makes it a pre-requisite for life, not an end product of natural selection; (ii) the inversely-causal, information-driven, structured hierarchy of autopoiesis is not reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry; and (iii) there is an unbridgeable abyss between the dirty, mass-action chemistry of the natural environmental and the perfectly-pure, single-molecule precision of biochemistry.”

So begins Alex Williams’ seminal article, Life’s Irreducible Structure — Autopoiesis, Part 1. In the article, Williams seeks to show that all living organisms are constituted by a five-level structured hierarchy that cannot be wholly accounted for in terms of naturalistic explanation. Rather, Williams’ model places primary emphasis on the successful transmission and communication of relevant biological information.

Note here that, so far, science has not identified any naturalistic source for “information” within the universe, biological or otherwise. And yet it appears that living organisms remain living only so long as they are “successfully communicating” information. When that process stops, the organism dies; i.e., becomes subject to the second law of thermodynamics — the consequences of which the now-deceased organism had managed to optimally distance itself from while alive.

Evidently Williams finds Michael Behe’s irreducible complexity arguments insufficiently general to explain biological complexity and organization, and so seeks a different explanation to generically characterize the living organism. Yet his proposed autopoietic model — of the “self-making,” i.e., self-maintaining or self-organizing and therefore living system — itself happens to be irreducibly complex. That is to say, on Williams’ model, any biological organism from microbe to man must be understood as a complete, functioning “whole,” transcending in the most profound way any definition of a particular organism as the “mere” sum of its constituting “material” parts.

Further, the idea of the “whole” must come prior to an understanding of the nature and function of the constituting parts. Williams terms this idea of the “whole” as inversely causal meta-information; as such, it is what determines the relations and organization of all the parts that constitute that “whole” of the living organism — a biological system in nature.

Just one further word before we turn to Williams’ autopoietic model. To begin with the supposition of “wholeness” flies in the face of methodological naturalism, the currently favored model of scientific investigation, and arguably the heart of Darwinist evolutionary theory. For methodological naturalism is classical and mechanistic (i.e., “Newtonian”) in its basic presuppositions: Among other things, it requires that all causation be “local.” Given this requirement, it makes sense to regard the “whole is merely the sum of its parts” as a valid statement — those parts being given to human understanding as the objects of direct observation of material events. The presumption here is that, given enough time, the piling up of the parts (i.e., of the “material events”) will eventually give you the description of the whole. Meanwhile, we all should just be patient. For centuries if need be, as a collaborator once suggested to me (in regard to abiogenesis. See more below).

Yet subsequent to classical physics came the astonishing revelations of relativity and quantum theory, both of which point to “non-local” causation. The transmission of information across widely spatially-separated regions (from the point of view of the biological organism as an extended body in time) so as to have causative effect in the emergence of biological life and its functions is decidedly a “non-local” phenomenon. Indeed, non-local causation seems ubiquitous, all-pervasive in the living state of biological organisms, as we shall see in what follows.

Williams’ Autopoietic Model
Williams lays out the five-level, autopoietic hierarchy specifying the living system this way (parenthetical notes added):

(i) components with perfectly pure composition (i.e., pure elements)
(ii) components with highly specific structure (i.e., molecules)
(iii) components that are functionally integrated (i.e., components work cooperatively toward achieving a purpose or goal)
(iv) comprehensively regulated information-driven processes (DNA, RNA)
(v) inversely-causal meta-informational strategies for individual and species survival (we’ll get to this in a minute)

Pictorially, the model lays out like this:

Figure 1 summarizes the five-level, hierarchical specification of any living organism, microbe to man. But how do we get a handle on what this hierarchy actually means?

An interesting way to look at the problem, it seems to me, is to look at the available potential “information content” of each of the five “levels” or “manifolds” of the hierarchy.

You’ll note that Figure 1 depicts an ascending arrow on the left labeled “complexity.” For our present purposes, we’ll define this as “algorithmic complexity,” understood as a function that maximally yields “information content.” If we can find complexity measures to plug into the model, we might gain additional insight thereby.

Fortunately, algorithmic complexity measures have been obtained for certain levels of the hierarchy; i.e., Level (i) and Levels (iv) and possibly Level (v). For the latter two, the measures were taken with respect to the living human being. Figure 1 can thus be expanded as follows:

Notes to Figure 2:

¹ Gregory Chaitin: “My paper on physics was never published, only as an IBM report. In it I took: Newton’s laws, Maxwell’s laws, the Schrödinger equation, and Einstein’s field equations for curved spacetime near a black hole, and solved them numerically, giving ‘motion-picture’ solutions. The programs, which were written in an obsolete computer programming language APL2 at roughly the level of Mathematica, were all about half a page long, which is amazingly simple.”

On this basis, Chaitin has pointed out that the complexity we observe in living systems cannot be accounted for on the basis of the chemical and physical laws alone, owing to the paucity of their information content.

² George Gilder: “In each of the some 300 trillion cells in every human body, the words of life churn almost flawlessly through our flesh and nervous system at a speed that utterly dwarfs the data rates of all the world’s supercomputers. For example, just to assemble some 500 amino-acid units into each of the trillions of complex hemoglobin molecules that transfer oxygen from the lungs to bodily tissues takes a total of some 250 peta operations per second. (The word “peta” refers to the number ten to the 15th power — so this tiny process requires 250 x 10¹⁵ operations.)

A Word about Abiogenesis
Darwin’s evolutionary theory does not deal with the origin of life. It takes life for granted, and then asks how it speciates. Moreover, the theory does not elaborate a description of the constitution of the individual living organism, such as Williams’ irreducibly complex/autopoietic (“IC/AP”) model proposes.

It’s important to recognize that neither Darwin’s theory, nor Williams’ model, deals with the origin of life. It seems to me that evolution theory and ID are not necessarily mutually-exclusive. One deals with the species level, the other the biological structure of living individuals, the “building blocks” of species, as it were.

Yet there is tremendous hostility towards intelligent design on the part of many orthodox evolutionary biologists, which has gotten so bad in recent times that the more doctrinaire Darwinists have run to the courts for “protection” of their cherished beliefs (and interests personal and institutional), insisting that ID “is not science.” Judges are not scientists; in general they are ill-equipped to make judgments “on the merits” of scientific controversies. Yet they render judgments all the same, with profound implications for how science is to be taught. I fail to see how this redounds to the benefit of scientific progress.

If science is defined as materialist and naturalist in its fundamental presuppositions — the currently-favored methodological naturalism — then ID does not meet the test of “what is science?” For it does not restrict itself to the material, the physical, but extends its model to information science, which is immaterial. The problem for Darwinists seems to be that there is no known source of biological information within Nature as classically understood (i.e., as fundamentally Newtonian — materialist and mechanistic in three dimensions).

The problem of abiogenesis goes straight to the heart of this issue. Abiogensis is a hypothesis holding that life spontaneously arises from inert, non-living matter under as-yet unknown conditions. Although evolution theory does not deal with the problem of the origin of life, many evolutionary biologists are intrigued by the problem, and want to deal with it in a manner consistent with Darwinian methods; i.e., the presuppositions of methodological naturalism, boosted by random mutation and natural selection. That is, to assume that life “emerges” from the “bottom-up” — from resources available at Levels (i) and (ii) of the IC/AP model.

There have been numerous experiments, most of which have taken the form of laboratory simulations of “lightning strikes” on a properly prepared chemical “soup” (e.g., Urey, Miller, et al.). At least one such experiment managed to produce amino acids — fundamental building blocks of life (at the (ii) level of Williams’ hierarchy). But amino acids are not life. On Williams’ model, to be “life,” they’d need to have achieved at least the threshold of Level (iii).

For it is the presence of “functionally-integrated components” that makes life possible, that sustains the living organism in its very first “duty”: That it will, along the entire extension of its complete biological make-up (whether simple or highly complex), globally organize its component systems in such a way as to maximally maintain the total organism’s “distance” from thermodynamic entropy. An “organism” that couldn’t do that wouldn’t last as an “organism” for very long.

And so in order for the materialist interpretation of abiogenesis to be true, the “chemical soup” experimental model would have to demonstrate how inorganic matter manages to “exempt” itself from one of the two most fundamental laws of Nature: the second law of thermodynamics.

From cells on up through species, all biological organisms — by virtue of their participation in Levels (i) and (ii) — are subject to the second law right from creation. Indeed, they are subject to it throughout their life spans. A friend points out that the second law is a big arguing point for Macroevolutionists, who try to argue that the second law is irrelevent, i.e., doesn’t apply to living systems, because “it only applies to closed systems and not to open ones.” Thus they say that living systems in nature are “open” systems. But what this line of reasoning does not tell us is what such systems are “open” to.

And yet we know that every cell is subject to the second law — simply by needing to fuel itself, it subjects itself to the effects of entropy, otherwise known as heat death. And although it can and does stave off such effects for a while, doing so requires the cell or species constantly to deal with maintaining distance from entropy in all its living functional components, organized globally. Entropy plays a big part in all life — from cells to completed species.

When the successful communication of meta-information begins to slow down and break down, cells and species then begin to succumb to the effects of entropy, to which they have been subjected all their entire life. This is because they can no longer combat, or stay ahead of the “entropy curve,” due to inefficient communication processes and, thus, degradation of the maintenance procedures communicated to the cells via the meta-information system that is specific to each particular biological entity and to each particular species. After all, any species description is necessarily an informed description.

Yet another origin-of-life approach — the Wimmer abiogenesis experiment — is highly instructive. He managed to “create” a polio virus. He did so by introducing RNA information into a “cell-free juice,” and the polio virus spontaneously resulted.

Wimmer used actual DNA to synthesize polio RNA based on information about the polio virus RNA which is widely available, even on the internet. The RNA information was truly “pulled” from the DNA, which “resides” at the next-higher level. He could not synthesize RNA directly; he first had to synthesize the DNA from the raw information and then synthesize the polio RNA from the synthetic DNA.

Yet RNA information, like all information, is immaterial. In terms of the Williams’ hierarchy, clearly Wimmer had obtained an organism functioning at about Level (iii) — because it had sufficient information to propel it to that level, as “pulled” by the information available at the next-higher level where DNA information “resides” — Level (iv).

Unlike biological organisms expressing all five levels of the Williams model, the polio virus, though fully autonomous as an information processor (leading to its “successful communication” in Wimmer’s laboratory), somehow still doesn’t have everything it needs to be fully “autonomous” as a living being. A virus, for instance, is dependent on a living host in order to execute its own life program. As such, it is a sort of “quasi-life.” Shannon Information Theory helps us to clarify such distinctions.

Before we turn to Shannon, it’s worth mentioning that, according to H. H. Pattee and Luis Rocha, the issue of autonomy (and semiosis — the language and the ability to encode/decode messages) is a huge stumbling block to abiogenesis theory. For that kind of complexity to emerge by self-organizing theory, in the RNA world, the organism would have to involuntarily toggle back and forth between non-autonomous and autonomous modes, first to gather, and then to make use of information content as an autonomous living entity. The question then becomes: What tells it how and when to “toggle?” Further, it appears the source of the information content that can toggle non-life into life remains undisclosed.

Shannon Information Theory
The DNA of any individual life form is exactly the same whether the organism is dead or alive. And we know this, for DNA is widely used and proved reliable in forensic tests of decedents in criminal courts of law. And so we propose:

Information is that which distinguishes life from non-life/death.

Information, paraphrased as “successful communication,” is the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in a receiver or molecular machine in going from a before state to an after state. It is the action which facilitates any successfully completed communication. Thus Shannon’s model describes the universal “mechanism” of communication. That is, it distinguishes between the “content” of a message and its “conduit”: The model is indifferent to the actual message being communicated, which could be anything, from “Don’t forget to put your boots on today — it’s snowing,” to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The value or meaning of the message being transmitted has no bearing on the Shannon model, which is the same for all messages whatever. Pictorially, the Shannon communication conduit looks like this:

Information is further defined by its independence from physical determination:

“I came to see that the computer offers an insuperable obstacle to Darwinian materialism. In a computer, as information theory shows, the content is manifestly independent of its material substrate. No possible knowledge of a computer’s materials can yield any information whatsoever about the actual content of its computations. In the usual hierarchy of causation, they reflect the software or ‘source code’ used to program the device; and, like the design of the computer itself, the software is contrived by human intelligence.

“The failure of purely physical theories to describe or explain information reflects Shannon’s concept of entropy and his measure of ‘news.’ Information is defined by its independence from physical determination: If it is determined, it is predictable and thus by definition not information. Yet Darwinian science seemed to be reducing all nature to material causes.” — George Gilder, “Evolution and Me,” National Review, July 17, 2006, p. 29f.

Referring to the Shannon diagram above, we can interpret the various elements of the model in terms of biological utility, as follows:

Note the head, “noise.” Biologically speaking, with respect to the fully-integrated, five-leveled biological organism, “noise” in the channel might be introduced by certain biological “enigmas,” which broadly satisfy the requirements of Williams’ model and, thus, are living organisms. Shannon Information Theory describes such “enigmas” as follows:

Bacteria — typified by autonomous successful communication; bacteria are single-cell organisms. Because they are autonomous entities, communications follow the normal flow in Shannon theory — source, message, encoder/transmitter, channel, decoder/receiver. The bacteria’s messages are not “broadcast” to other nearby bacteria but are autonomous to the single-cell organism.

Bacterial Spores — typified by autonomous successful communication. Bacterial spores, such as anthrax, are like other bacteria except they can settle into a dormant state. Dormant bacterial spores begin regular successful communication under the Shannon model once an “interrupt” has occurred, for instance the presence of food. Anthrax, for instance, may lay dormant for years until breathed into a victim’s lungs, whereupon it actively begins its successful albeit destructive (to its host) communication, which often leads to the death of its host; i.e., the bacterium’s “food source.”

Mycoplasmas — typified as an autonomous bacterial model parasite successfully communicating. Mycoplasmas are akin to bacteria except they lack an outer membrane and so often attach to other cells, whereby they may cause such events as, for instance, the disease pneumonia. In the Shannon model, mycoplasmas are considered “autonomous” in that the communications are often restricted to the mycoplasma itself; e.g., self-reproduction. But because they also act like a parasite, they might alter the host’s properties and thus result in malfunctions in the autonomous communication of the host by, for instance, interfering with the channel.

Mimivirus — typified as an autonomous virus model parasite successfully communicating. Mimiviruses are gigantic viruses. They are viruses because they are parasites to their host, relying on the host for protein engineering. But the mimiviruses (unlike regular viruses) apparently do not need to be a parasite, and thus they are “autonomous” with regard to the Shannon model. But like the mycoplasmas, the presence of mimiviruses can alter properties of the host and thereby result in malfunctions in the autonomous communications of the host by, for instance, interfering with the channel.

Viroids — typified as non-autonomous virus-like noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication. Viroids have no protein coat. They are single strands of RNA that lack the protein coat of regular viruses. They are noise in the channel under the Shannon model; i.e., messages only that are not communicated autonomously within the viroids themselves. They can also be seen as “broadcast” messages, because viroids may cause their own message (RNA) to be introduced into the host.

Viruses — typified as non-autonomous virus noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication. Viruses feed genetic data to the host. They are strands of DNA or RNA that have a protein coat. Viruses are parasites to the host, relying on the host for communication; e.g., reproduction. In the Shannon model, viruses are either noise or broadcasts that are not autonomous in the virus and appear as noise messages to the host. It is possible that, unlike the polio virus which is destructive, there may be some viruses (and viroids) whose messages cause a beneficial adaptation in the host.

Prions — typified as non-autonomous protein noise/mutation contributing to successful/failed communication (protein crystallization). Prions are protein molecules that have neither DNA nor RNA. Currently, prions are the suspected cause of bovine spongiform encephalopathy — Mad Cow Disease. In the Shannon model, prions would be incoherent in the channel because they have no discernable message; that is, neither DNA nor RNA. Thus the prion would lead to channel or decoding malfunctions.

So far there is no known origin for information (successful communication) in space/time. This should be visualized as activity represented by the arrows on the above illustration. Possible origins include a universal vacuum field, harmonics, geometry.

Shannon’s mathematical theory of communications applied to molecular biology shows genuine promise of having some significant implications for the theory of natural selection in explaining the rise of information (successful communication), autonomy, and semiosis (language, encoding/decoding). — S. Venable, J. Drew, “Shannon Information and Complex Systems Theory,” Don’t Let Science Get You Down, Timothy, Lulu Press, 2006, p. 207f.

It seems worthwhile to note here that, under Shannon’s model, the thermodynamic “tab” is paid when the “molecular machine” goes from the before state to the after state. At that moment, it dissipates heat into the surroundings. Level (v) meta-information successfully communicated to the organism provides it with strategies to counter and compensate for local thermodynamic effects. Ultimately, when the organism reaches a state in which it is no longer successfully communicating, the entropy tab must be paid by ordinary means. And so eventually, the living organism dies.

Putting Williams’ IC/AP Model into Context
So far, the autopoietic model — though it provides an excellent description of the information flows necessary to establish and maintain an organism in a “living state” — seems to be a bit of an abstraction. Indeed, in order to be fully understood, the model needs to be placed into the context in which it occurs — that is, in Nature.

Each living entity as described by the model is a part and participant in a far greater “whole.” Niels Bohr put it this way: “A scientific analysis of parts cannot disclose the actual character of a living organism because that organism exists only in relation to the whole of biological life.” Including the species-specific meta-information unique to any particular species, which also controls and dictates how the entire biological system works as a “whole”; i.e., at the global level. And arguably, not only in relation to the entirety of biological life, but to the physical forces of nature, to inorganic entities, and to other biological beings, including the “enigmas” described above, which appear to be a sort of “quasi-life.” For even though they may be autonomous communicators, some of these “quasi-life” examples suggest an organic state that is somehow not “sufficiently informed” to stand on its own; i.e., they exemplify a state that needs to latch onto a fully-functioning biological entity in order to complete their own “program” for life — the very definition of a parasite.

The single most telling point that Williams’ model makes is that information is vital to the living state; that it flows “downward” from the “top” of his model — Level (v), meta-information — and not from the “bottom” of the model flowing “upwards” by the incremental means characterizing Levels (i) and (ii) — not to mention orthodox Darwinist expectation. On this model, Levels (i) and (ii) “do not know how to fit themselves” into the “biological picture.” For that, they need the information available at Levels (iii) to (v).

Many questions relevant to our exploration of the fundaments of biology have not been touched on in this article — e.g., what is the meaning of “emergence?” What is the manner in which “complexification” takes place in nature? What do we mean by “open” and “closed” systems? What do we mean by “self-ordered” or “self-organizing” systems in nature? (And what does the prefix “self” mean with respect to such questions?)

But since we’re out of time, we won’t be dealing with such problems here and now, though I hope we may return to them later. Instead, I’ll leave you, dear reader, with yet another depiction of Figure 1, this time elaborated to show the total context in which the irreducibly complex, autopoietic model is embedded:

Note the model now sits, not only with respect to its natural environment, but also with respect to the quantum domain of pure potentiality, and also with respect to a (proposed) extra-mundane source of biological information.

I think for the biological sciences to actually progress, a model such as Williams’ IC/AP model is worthy of serious consideration. Remember, Darwin’s theory is wholly classical, meaning dimensionally limited to 3-space, to local, mechanical, largely force-field-driven material causation. Relativity and quantum theory have both moved well beyond those precincts. It’s time for the Darwinian theory of evolution to “catch up” with the current state of scientific knowledge — and especially with the implications of information science.

©2009 Jean F. Drew

[betty boop]

This is a deep deep subject, and one that can drive ya batty if we’re not careful, but I’ll have to disagree about God not being able to be deterministic. At least till I hear more counter argument.

It'll drive ya batty for sure! LOLOL! Yet to me, it seems that God is, not rigorously deterministic with respect to His dealings with creation, but rather providential.

According to Catholic doctrine,

God is the source of being, and thus gives being to all that exists outside of himself. (God himself exists necessarily.) God is outside of time, and thus creates (and knows) everything, past, present, and future, by a single eternal (i.e., a-temporal) act. He is the creator of all finite beings in every aspect of their being, and hence creates them with all their natural propensities, powers, and mutual relationships. Consequently, while created things do have natural causal relationships to each other ("secondary causality"), God is nevertheless the direct cause of every thing ("primary causality"): God is the First Cause — "first" causally, not temporally. (A simple analogy is that a dagger and the playwright Shakespeare are both causes of Polonius' death in the play Hamlet: the dagger kills Polonius, while Shakespeare causes the whole scene, including Polonius, the dagger, Polonius' death, and the fact that the dagger causes Polonius' death. Shakespeare is analogous to the First Cause, the dagger to a secondary cause. Secondary causes only operate because of the First Cause.) It is Catholic dogma that "God, by his Providence, protects and governs all that he established, 'reaching mightily from end to end and ordering all things sweetly.'"...

One sees that the doctrine of Providence is not only that God governs the world, but that his governance is wise and beneficent. Divine providence is distinguished into "mediate providence" and "immediate providence," the former exercised through secondary causes and the latter directly, without such mediation. Therefore, saying that an event is governed by Providence implies nothing about whether it has natural causes and can be naturally explained. Nevertheless, according to traditional teaching, the ordinary means of divine Providence is through natural secondary causality. As Suarez put it, "God does not intervene directly with the natural order where secondary causes are sufficient to produce the intended effect."
— Stephen M. Barr, "The Concept of Randomness in Science and Divine Providence," in Divine Action and Natural Selection, Singapore: World Scientific, 2009, p. 467. Emphasis added.

A Catholic, Barr is Professor of Physics at the Bartol Research Institute and the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Delaware. In this article, he wants to know whether "randomness" in nature necessarily implies that nature is "unguided," "unplanned," and "undirected" in a sense that would contradict the notion of Providence. As a physicist, of course he knows that such things as quantum fluctuations and the motions of molecules in a gas are random. Barr also notes that biologists assume that genetic mutations are random. "Such assumptions," he writes, "are intrinsic to modern science's way of explaining the world and to our notions of what is 'natural'." On the chance/statistical randomness question, Barr concludes that chance events do occur in the natural world; but that it does not follow that such events are necessarily "uncaused." He gives an analogy by way of explanation:

Suppose one is driving down an interstate highway in the United States and observing the license plates of the cars that pass by. They will be from various States of the Union, and the sequence will exhibit some degree of randomness: New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Jersey, Florida, etc. (There are probabilities involved, as in any random process. On certain highways a license plate from New Jersey is more like to appear than one from Kansas....) The sequence of license plates is random in the sense that knowing where one car is from does not tell you where another is from: the cars are "independent" and thus "uncorrelated." This randomness, however, in no way implies that the cars' movements and locations are "undirected," "unguided," and "unplanned." Quite the reverse is true: the cars are directed by the wills of their drivers, who are guided by maps and pursuing plans. It is just that the plan of one driver has no direct connection to the plans of the other drivers, because the lives of the various drivers are (generally speaking) uncorrelated with each other. [Ibid., p. 470]

Barr's conclusion is that "every event may be part of a chain of causality, but because there are many independent chains of causality that intersect each other and impinge on each other, sequences or juxtapositions arise that exhibit a lack of correlation and thus 'statistical randomness.' The world does not have one story line, but many story lines that have little direct relation to each other.... Events that impinge on a subsystem of the world from other parts of the world, or that result from some adventitious juxtaposition, seem as 'chance' events. These chance events can disrupt or substantially change the course of events in the subsystem. Events in this world, therefore, do not follow a predictable pattern, but are caught up in a vast web of contingency." [Ibid., p. 471.]

CottShop, when you averred that God's mode of causation of/in the world is "deterministic," the image that came to my mind was the system of mechanistic causation elaborated by Isaac Newton. But that system cannot do for God, it seems to me. For causation in Newton's world is always a local, time-bound phenomenon. God as First Cause (i.e., a-temporal cause) is not bound by the space/time system of classical mechanics. And yet it is also clear that Newton very much wanted to "put God into the world," in order to, among other things, "fine-tune" it (i.e., error correction) from time to time. These details are beyond the scope of the present writing.

Personally, I don't think a model like this does justice to God as First Cause. I think hosepipe's astute remark — that "God does not make Bluebirds. He made Bluebirds that make Bluebirds" — indicates the manner in which divine Providence tends to work in nature (i.e., through secondary causes). Certainly it seems that God directs and guides the world and all therein according to his plan and purpose; but he doesn't have to, say, directly mess with the (apparently random) quantum world in order for the "right" outcomes to occur in nature.

Analogously, inversely-causal metainformation (which is an a-temporal cause) might be thought of as First Cause (in the sense of Logos) of the biological world. All secondary causation in living nature flows from it, and is "constrained" by it.

Just trying to work through these ideas, my friend. Again, you're right: They'll drive you "batty!" Your thoughts?

[betty boop]

Thank you for your kindness, TXnMA!

[Alamo-Girl]

The ways to actually compress data (meaning putting 3 pounds of data into a 2 pound bag or smaller..) should be mandatory study for DNA researchers.. Because that is exactely what DNA is.. IS God compressing information.. DNA is data compression.. not like data compression but exactely data/information compression..

Maybe computer data compressor engineers should study DNA as well.. Could be they'd learn something.. Ya think!...

Indeed, and from what I can tell there is much interest in determining the data compression algorithm of DNA as well as exploring algorithms which may be able to compress it even further.

[hosepipe]

[ Indeed, and from what I can tell there is much interest in determining the data compression algorithm of DNA as well as exploring algorithms which may be able to compress it even further. ]

I suspect its not one algorithm.. but multiple subroutines for different purposes.. in a multifarious way.. Routines that can change their function as fully as the crystaline nature of water.. i.e. snowflakes..

Humans may be too lineal in their thinking to understand DNA..

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your outstanding essay-post and all those interesting excerpts, dearest sister in Christ!

I would however that Barr had tackled the word "random" per se - that in the natural sciences, it really means "unpredictable." At the root, mathematics, one cannot say something is random in the system when he doesn't know what the system "is." And we do not know and can never know the full number and type of dimensions, e.g. space and time.

Concerning predestination, I do aver that no one and no thing can thwart the will of God.

Remember the former things of old: for I [am] God, and [there is] none else; [I am] God, and [there is] none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times [the things] that are not [yet] done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: - Isaiah 46:9-10

And concerning free will, I do aver that within the un-thwart-able will of God, is His permissive will which allows us to choose whether to love Him, believe Him and trust Him - or not.

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. - Matthew 22:37-38

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. - John 5:24

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. - Proverbs 3:5-6

Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. - Psalms 91:14

To God be the glory!

[Alamo-Girl]

Humans may be too lineal in their thinking to understand DNA..

Oh so very true, dear brother in Christ - both figuratively and literally. IOW, the very geometry of DNA may be part of its information content.

[CottShop]

[[Personally, I don’t think a model like this does justice to God as First Cause. I think hosepipe’s astute remark — that “God does not make Bluebirds. He made Bluebirds that make Bluebirds” — indicates the manner in which divine Providence tends to work in nature (i.e., through secondary causes). Certainly it seems that God directs and guides the world and all therein according to his plan and purpose; but he doesn’t have to, say, directly mess with the (apparently random) quantum world in order for the “right” outcomes to occur in nature.]]

Not sure I’m following your line of reasoning here- God was indeed ‘first cause’, and it is my beleif that He created the genome to handle most mistakes thrown at it by designing the informaiton to adjust on the fly- this would take forethought and foreknowledge to code the metainfo to deal with intrusions- I’m not seeing how time constraints play into this? I don’t see that God has to keep ‘stepping in’ to adjust code ‘as needed’ as the code was ‘perfected’ (in the sense that it contianed all necessary info right fro mthe start to deal with problems- I’m not implying that all problems can be handeled, but rather that species specific info is able to handle most, but is still under hte curse and could potentially not be able to handle some, according to God’s directives at creation)

[[ In this article, he wants to know whether “randomness” in nature necessarily implies that nature is “unguided,” “unplanned,” and “undirected” in a sense that would contradict the notion of Providence.]]

No I don’t beleive so- God woudl know, being omniscient, what randomenss would do to species before it even occured, and would have designed creatures to either handle the problems or succumb to them according to His will. He very well could have created creatures to lvie for some itme, but die off- go extinct, and infact we know htis has happened, but it didn’t take God by surprise, as it were, when this happened- These die-offs are a result of sin, and were planned for.

As God directs everything, being omnipotent, even ‘randomness’ bows to His direction or rather is subject to His direction- this is another deep subject, as one has to wonder how somethign could be ‘random’ when it is ‘directed’ By God- but perhaps it owudl be better to state it is ‘used’ by God for His own purposes

[[The world does not have one story line, but many story lines that have little direct relation to each other.... ]]

I’m not sure I agree with htis- I think everythign is itner-related, and that an omniscient God sees all ‘independent lines’ (which are actually depenedent on other lines), and created everyhtign to either positively deal with, or negatively deal with, all possible ‘independent’ actions no metter what order they occure in (Which again, God, being onmiscient, woudl have already foreseen).

We’re only really able to see perhaps several ‘independent’ lines at a time (kind of like in a chess game- the best players can visualize quite a few lines of manuevers in advance) and htis I think limits our understanding, but if we were to be able to see all ‘indepenedent’ lines, I think we would see that they are all inter-dependent in actuality.

Ouch! Brain ache.

[CottShop]

[[I would however that Barr had tackled the word “random” per se - that in the natural sciences, it really means “unpredictable.” At the root, mathematics, one cannot say something is random in the system when he doesn’t know what the system “is.” And we do not know and can never know the full number and type of dimensions, e.g. space and time.]]

Good point- We can’t comprehend or grasp the all knowing omniscience of God who would use a ‘total system’ made up of perhaps many smaller systems- the ‘total system’ would be the ‘metainformation system’ of creation that took every possible action into concideration before creation. (Not implying that God had to ‘concider’ anything, being bound to ‘discision making’ such as we are- I think natural facts and laws abotu everything simply dictated creation in an automatic fashion that didn’t require descision making- ugggh- leaping into another theological realm with that claim lol)

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for sharing your thoughts, dear brother in Christ, and thank you for your encouragements!

Not implying that God had to ‘concider’ anything, being bound to ‘discision making’ such as we are- I think natural facts and laws abotu everything simply dictated creation in an automatic fashion that didn’t require descision making- ugggh- leaping into another theological realm with that claim lol

LOLOL! That's precisely why man-as-the-observer time-relative theological disputes are foreign to me.

God's Name is I AM.

Beyond knowing that is His Name, we cannot put ourselves in His shoes so to speak.

By the way, one of my favorite meditations is that His Name, I AM, answers all my concerns.

"When will ...?" I AM

"How did ...?" I AM

"Why does ...?" I AM

"But what about...?" I AM

and so on.

To God be the glory!

[betty boop]

Ouch! Brain ache.

LOLOL!!! That's for sure!

I must go out today — it's my Dad's 88th birthday celebration! So, off I go, but will write again ASAP.

[CottShop]

Woohoo- 88 Tel lhim Happy birthday from us all at FR for us :) Have a good time :)

[Alamo-Girl]

Happy Birthday to your dad! And Happy Valentine's Day to you, dearest sister in Christ!

[betty boop]

Oh, thank you so very much for your birthday wishes for my Dad! We had such a splendid day! I hope you had a marvelous Valentine’s Day, too, dearest sister in Christ!

[betty boop]

God's Name is I AM.

Beyond knowing that is His Name, we cannot put ourselves in His shoes so to speak.

Oh, so very true, dearest sister in Christ! And how very easy it is for us humans to lose sight of this indisputable fact. The result being that so often we see God through "rational filters" of our own making, which do not at all apply to God, let alone fully "specify" His divine will.

But He has already told us what His divine will is: I Am That Am. In so saying, He announces Himself to us by the name Creator and Lord of LIFE. Not — please notice — by the name God of Reason. Our Christian doctrines are "reasonable" to us. But they are not God in His inexpressibly sublime fullness. No mere human description could ever be.

And so, I wholly agree with you, "That's precisely why man-as-the-observer time-relative theological disputes are foreign to me." We shouldn't push doctrinal differences so hard that we occlude the real presence of God from our mind and spirit, and so lose Him in the ensuing dispute.

Thank you oh so very much for your absolutely lovely essay/post, dearest sister in Christ!

[betty boop]

As God directs everything, being omnipotent, even ‘randomness’ bows to His direction or rather is subject to His direction — this is another deep subject, as one has to wonder how something could be ‘random’ when it is ‘directed’ By God — but perhaps it would be better to state it is ‘used’ by God for His own purposes.

Yes, I entirely agree the problem can be stated in that way, and such statement would be absolutely true. But this does not shed any light into the nature of randomness itself.

I think Alamo-Girl has the correct common sense (and mathematical) definition of a random event: I.e., it is an unpredicted event, meaning it's an event that a human being cannot ascribe to a known cause in advance of the occurrence of the phenomenon he observes. Since it has no ascribable cause, it appears to be "undirected," perhaps purposeless — just a freak accident maybe. Still, to me, you cannot obtain a highly ordered system out of a causal chain of freak accidents, not even if you can prove the universe is "eternal"; i.e., had no beginning.

Anyhoot, I'm not at all in-amicable to the ideas you presented in your last lovely post, CottShop. I just want to know what the term "random" means in the natural sciences nowadays. Plus for some strange reason I have some deep-set, maybe intuitive idea that "random development," via the general situation of contingency in nature, is what introduces novelty and change in a natural system, preventing it from becoming completely "static" — which to my mind is practically indifferentiationable from the physical realization of thermodynamic entropy.

Anyhoot, what I truly liked about Stephen Barr's article in was that here, we have a physicist, speaking directly to other physicists, regarding his proposal of the reconcilability of divine Providence and "randomness" in nature, as these terms are used in the physical sciences nowadays.

You mentioned that you didn't think that "time constraints play into this." By which I take you to mean that the very fact of the eternity of God, and His Purposive Will, fully accounts for all organic (and for that matter, inorganic) entities in nature. I totally agree with you. But that is not a scientific insight.

If you want to have a conversation with scientists, you can't just say "God did it!" No more than they can just say, "(Random) nature did it."

And that's what's so spectacularly engaging about this book I've been citing recently, Divine Action and Natural Selection. I've been aware of this book for well over a year now, from its early pre-production stages, when "editorial posture" was being fleshed out. It finally went to press last October — with what I'm satisfied to say is a proper and just editorial tone.

This book is a confab of scientists speaking among themselves regarding the hot-button issues of Darwinian evolution theory vs. ID. At bottom, it raises — and ventilates from various scientific and cultural perspectives — the issue of whether science and religion, faith and reason, are mutually-exclusive "magisteria," or whether they may overlap in a certain key sense.

The book's plenty pricey. But oh, worth every penny, IMHO! Whatta feast!

Thank you so very much for your kind birthday wishes for my Dad, dear brother in Christ! And also for your keen, perceptive essay/post!

[metmom]

I think Alamo-Girl has the correct common sense (and mathematical) definition of a random event: I.e., it is an unpredicted event, meaning it's an event that a human being cannot ascribe to a known cause in advance of the occurrence of the phenomenon he observes. Since it has no ascribable cause, it appears to be "undirected," perhaps purposeless — just a freak accident maybe.

I think that it can also be applied to any event the outcome of which cannot yet be predicted because of the large number of variables and possible paths it can take being involved.

If we only knew enough, we could predict anything.

Hmmmm.....

[CottShop]

[[If you want to have a conversation with scientists, you can’t just say “God did it!” No more than they can just say, “(Random) nature did it.”]]

Oh, I aggree with htat- I was just freeing myself from the constraints of being ‘politically/scientifically’ compliant for a bit

[[And that’s what’s so spectacularly engaging about this book I’ve been citing recently, Divine Action and Natural Selection.]]

Sounds liek maybe they too are freeign htemselves from the constraints of political/scientific compliance too- Sounds liek it might be a very telling book to see how they think behind hte restrictive mask of naturalism

[Alamo-Girl]

Yes indeed, we had a beautiful Valentine’s Day!!!

[Alamo-Girl]

And how very easy it is for us humans to lose sight of this indisputable fact. The result being that so often we see God through "rational filters" of our own making, which do not at all apply to God, let alone fully "specify" His divine will.

But He has already told us what His divine will is: I Am That Am. In so saying, He announces Himself to us by the name Creator and Lord of LIFE. Not — please notice — by the name God of Reason. Our Christian doctrines are "reasonable" to us. But they are not God in His inexpressibly sublime fullness. No mere human description could ever be.

Beautifully said, dearest sister in Christ!

Thank you and thank you for your encouragements!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your outstanding essay-post, dearest sister in Christ, and thank you for your encouragements!

I also really enjoyed the excerpts from Barr's article! The book does indeed sound like a feast.

Plus for some strange reason I have some deep-set, maybe intuitive idea that "random development," via the general situation of contingency in nature, is what introduces novelty and change in a natural system, preventing it from becoming completely "static" — which to my mind is practically indifferentiationable from the physical realization of thermodynamic entropy.

Seems to me that things would be rather dull if every event could be predicted.

Nevertheless, if there were one more expanded dimension of time - an observer from that perspective could accurately say to an observer in our 4 dimensions (proceeding on a time line) precisely what will happen next.