An Unfortunate Relapse; More Dissent from Darwin

[gluadys]

However, theologicall, do we dare draw this line? Altenburg suggests we are bad at drawing that line. Much of the jury is still out, but I thing this is a reasonable extrapolation.

I think you are extrapolating a lot more about the Altenburg conference than the news articles suggest. After all, it hasn't even happened yet and the reports won't be out till next year.

However, just think about what you are saying. If a random process is delimited by purpose, can it still be random?

In some sense, yes. I may have a purpose in mind as to what a roll of the dice will mean in terms of future action, but that doesn't mean I influence the roll of the dice.

If there are several ways to achieve a purpose, one can permit the particular way it is achieved to be chosen at random. Like a flow chart with lots of choices that all eventually lead to a single node which every path must traverse.

True, but as suggested above, are we talking about ways that people express what they don't understand, or are we talking about real randomness?

I suspect that most of the time we are talking about the first. We are speaking, as Tinker Grey says, of random distribution, in which we cannot foresee the next value, but can determine with some certainty the range in which it will probably fall.

I am not even certain that ontological randomness exists, though I don't buy the determinist arguments against it either. I don't consider real randomness to be incompatible with deity.

Now your self-organizing concept starts again down that interminable road. Why do we have the physical laws we have, which could possibly have been different if Big Bang had happened a bit differently?

Theoretical physicist, Lee Smolin, in The Life of the Cosmos, estimates that given the current potential range of values for the fundamental properties of matter and forces affecting matter, the potential number of differing universes is something like 10^270. However, in less than a fraction of a % of them is it likely that stars and galaxies would form.

And naturally, without stars there would be no habitable planets. And no one around to ask such questions.

So the very fact we exist is a partial explanation of why the universe is as it is. Because only a universe such as we have, or one very like it, is one in which beings like us could exist.

Now Smolin believes this happened by chance. We just got lucky that this universe came into being and produced us. You and I are not obliged to believe likewise.

All we ever get is a part of the "organizing." Do you see why this phrase betrays such enormous philosophical weakness (a problem special to all human, not just scientists)?

Not really. As far as I can see, when a scientist talks of "self-organizing" the reference is to properties of matter than result in particular behaviours. And that just takes us back to asking why the universe displays such properties.

Perhaps you are investing a deeper meaning into "self-organizing".

Once the scientist gets out of the origins business and does not presume to have a conclusion on such matters, all of his Altenburg problems disappear. That should reduce his workload by about one seventh, giving him time to get to Church for some real answers.

Well, I don't know why origins should be off-limits for scientific study, nor why the scientific work-load should be lightened. Nor do I know of any potential scientific conclusion that would change the theology of creation anyway. So why worry about scientific probing into origins?

{singing} Some say love it is a ..... (Get the hook out)

Ohh! That bad, eh? btw, that was one of my Mum's favorite songs, and we played it at her funeral.

I think scientists should draw a better boundary that keeps them out of the philosophy business unless they are willing to be explicit and let the rest of us join in.

I don't think that is possible. I think the boundary between science on one hand and philosophy/theology on the other, is necessarily flexible and contingent on what we come to know about the universe scientifically.

For example: for millennia, the only available explanation of thunderstorms was theological. But as the mechanisms of weather and meterology were worked out, they came to be accounted for in terms of physical causation and natural law. The boundaries changed. We came to think of the relation between gods and weather differently. Yet we still pray for rain.

Origins is a philosophy problem.

That doesn't make it off-limits for science. It can be both a science problem and a philosophy problem. Different modes of reasoning about the same phenomena. All new scientific knowledge invokes philosophical response.

As an evolutionist, would you think they would be better off by saying, "We seem to be lead to an idea of "self-organizing" by issues in the data, but we know that nothing can create itself, so the principle at work must be God.

Neither as an evolutionist nor as a Christian would I agree with that. A scientist qua scientist, should stick to the data and follow where it leads.

Lets pray that He shows us how He did it."

OTOH, as a human being and a believer, this prayer is absolutely appropriate.

A bit sentimental and non-scientific, but it does acknowledge the philosophical limit of science at least.

However, experience does a poor job of explaining where this boundary between the non-random and random lies.

Experience says that we should not expect God to heal us. That luck, positive thinking and sensible treatment is the appropriate boundary. The Word says otherwise. God is Jehova-Raffa, the God who heals you.

That is probably true. But, is there a presumptive boundary?

What boundary? Have you forgotten? There is no boundary. Nothing in science excludes God.

When a person is healed by trusting in luck, positive thinking and sensible thinking, that doesn't mean God has been excluded from the healing process. It is still God who heals, even when all the science we know is applied to its fullest.

I am not sure what you mean by presumptive boundary, but for the moment I will go out on a limb and say that no such boundary exists.

It seems to me this is half the problem with creationism, is that it wants to draw boundaries between God and nature and exclude God from his own creation.

 

[shernren]

There are two terms being bandied about here that aren't being defined properly.

The first is "randomness". In its colloquial usage most people think of the uniform distribution. "If things were completely random", people think, "a five-sided snowflake would be as likely as a six-sided snowflake, and thus it isn't randomness that makes a snowflake six-sided, it must be some kind of ordered law at work!"

Most people also need a course in statistical physics. And in my course on statistical physics the lecturer has been repeating, over and over again, the "fundamental assumption": All states of a system are equally likely. Fullstop. Nothing chooses or sorts or selects between them. No higher power, no force, not even a physical kind of criterion for what is better or worse. You thought evolution was a bastion of godlessness? (Learning things like these reinforces my conviction that creationism is essentially cultural, not Scriptural. People diss Darwin; do they even know who Boltzmann is?)

So how do we get from this "fundamental assumption" to the order and relative-lack-of-chaos we see in nature? It's the power of large numbers that does this. Take 10 coins and flip them. Is there any law of nature that makes them come up 5 heads and 5 tails most of the time? No, it's just that there are 252 ways to get 5 heads and 5 tails and only one way to get all heads; so if each way is equally likely, then obviously you will get 5 heads and 5 tails a lot more often than you get all heads. Just by counting. And pure "randomness". And if you flipped 10^23 coins in a row, the number of ways in which you could get exactly half of them up and exactly half of them down is so many more than any other way that you could flip coins for the age of the universe and not see anything different. And so the reason that you get six-sided snowflakes and not five is simply because there are so many ways to make six-sided snowflakes compared to five-sided ones and thus by simple chance, all snowflakes are six-sided.

The second term is "self-organization". Self-organization is simply a description of certain properties of a system. For example, take the Belousov-Zhabotinsky family of chemical reactions. The chemical reactions you did in high school always end up at their equilibrium states fairly quickly (which is why they are used in high school); industrial processes may take longer in bigger vats but they always start far from equilibrium and head straight for it. But BZ reactions oscillate - they start far from equilibrium, then swing to the other end, then swing back, until they finally reach equilibrium a long time later.

So again, self-organization is just a physical property of the system, something that can be described mathematically in many cases. It's the tendency of a system to stay away from its equilibrium state by means of self-interactions. Life is self-organization.

 

[sfs]

I think you are extrapolating a lot more about the Altenburg conference than the news articles suggest. After all, it hasn't even happened yet and the reports won't be out till next year.

It's generally wise to put less confidence in press releases about science than in the science itself (although both can of course be wrong). Press releases about science that hasn't been done yet are even less reliable.

I suspect that most of the time we are talking about the first. We are speaking, as Tinker Grey says, of random distribution, in which we cannot foresee the next value, but can determine with some certainty the range in which it will probably fall.

This is certainly true of the randomness of mutations. Most mutations are likely to be deterministic in principle; that is, if we had a molecular-level description of a cell and a detailed enough simulation, we could predict exactly which mutations would happen. The exceptions would be mutations that involved quantum effects (getting hit by a cosmic ray, for example), which at present cannot be described deterministically.

What scientists mean when they talk about "random mutations", actually, is not even that they are unpredictable, but that they are random with respect to the needs of the organism. The contrast is with theories of evolution in which the organism changes in order to adapt to its environment. In neo-Darwinian evolution, organisms just change, and natural selection sorts out the changes that are adaptive from those that are not. For the purposes of biology, the mutations can be adequately modeled as being drawn from a random distribution, and so that is the level at which they are treated.

[snip much stuff that I agree with]

It seems to me this is half the problem with creationism, is that it wants to draw boundaries between God and nature and exclude God from his own creation.

Exactly. When some of us complain about God of the gaps theology, we are not complaining that God is being used to plug gaps in our knowledge. We are complaining that God is being restricted to the gaps.

 

[busterdog]

And in my course on statistical physics the lecturer has been repeating, over and over again, the "fundamental assumption": All states of a system are equally likely. Fullstop. Nothing chooses or sorts or selects between them. No higher power, no force, not even a physical kind of criterion for what is better or worse. You thought evolution was a bastion of godlessness? (Learning things like these reinforces my conviction that creationism is essentially cultural, not Scriptural. People diss Darwin; do they even know who Boltzmann is?)

* * *

So again, self-organization is just a physical property of the system, something that can be described mathematically in many cases. It's the tendency of a system to stay away from its equilibrium state by means of self-interactions. Life is self-organization.

Tautology.

You do agree that there is a heated debate over whether this view of statistics is at sensible?

I am trying to think of whether a creationist ever agreed with me. Nonetheless, every time you put your finger on this epistemological wound, I think to myself, here we are again in Genesis 3. God understood the problem well before we did and put it in Holy Scripture. More proof of inerrancy. Knowledge of good and evil as the fundamental problem for man. If it were not so, you wouldn't be arguing with me on the basis of because-it-just-is-ism.

I already know you disagree, by the way. I know the arguments against.

 

[shernren]

Tautology.

I will be utterly surprised if the day comes when you make some argument about origins that doesn't hinge on a word that you are completely incapable of using properly.

What is a "tautology"? It is a statement that is true by definition. Mind you, tautologies are true. In fact (in a wonderful double entendre) they are true by definition. The simplest example of a tautology is the statement "X or not X". For example, either I am at class or I am not at class. That is a tautology. That is also entirely true, and indeed if I am not at class then I am, well, not at class - it is also a very useful and sensible statement.

A slightly more intricate tautology is "X or Y", where Y has been previously defined to be not X. For example, I am at class or I am absent - where the definition of "absent" is "not at class". Again, this is an entirely true and sensible statement. If a tutor marks me absent because I am not at class I would be absurd to protest: "You can't mark me absent just because I wasn't at class! That's a tautology!"

A third kind of tautology is "X is Y", where Y has been previously defined to be a property of X. To use an example from analysis (from where I'm typing this), if one defines the real numbers as the "completion" of the rational numbers, then the statement that "The real numbers are complete" is a tautology. Doesn't make it false. Indeed if this tautology didn't hold I wouldn't have the subject Analysis to take.

So what, exactly, that has been said throughout this thread is a tautology? And which of those tautologies are false? (Answer: none.)

You do agree that there is a heated debate over whether this view of statistics is at sensible?

Is it even a debate about statistics?

As I read through the original works (instead of the pale DI rehashing) there was a completely different shade of meaning to me. I think the discussion is a lot about what it means to "cause" something. Did the winter of 1942 cause the defeat of Germany? In a strict logical sense no: the investment of German troops into conquering Moscow, the political intricacies over breaking the German-Russian truce, the very presence of humans at all on the planet and their very tendency towards war, all don't have squat to do with the cold winter of 1942. There are a hundred different things that could have influenced the outcome. But saying that doesn't qualify me to revise the history of World War II, nor does it mean Hitler's idea to lay siege to Moscow in the cold was a stroke of military brilliance.

Same with natural selection. Natural selection is just a principle; the fact that it is just as applicable to GA programming to obtain the most efficient possible jet engine configuration, as to life and its evolution, should be a warning that it isn't quite specific to life and doesn't "explain" (in the formal sense) much. That is miles away from saying that Behe has an edge over Dawkins.

I am trying to think of whether a creationist ever agreed with me. Nonetheless, every time you put your finger on this epistemological wound, I think to myself, here we are again in Genesis 3. God understood the problem well before we did and put it in Holy Scripture. More proof of inerrancy. Knowledge of good and evil as the fundamental problem for man. If it were not so, you wouldn't be arguing with me on the basis of because-it-just-is-ism.

You haven't so much as defined your terms properly, let alone set out any form of argument that is remotely logical. If there even was an epistemological wound to speak of you wouldn't know it if it stared you in the face.

I already know you disagree, by the way. I know the arguments against.

Then why bother?

 

[busterdog]

Then why bother?

I guess we agree on that.

 

[mark kennedy]

"Oh, Benson, dear Benson, you are so mercifully free of the ravages of intelligence."

I like satire sometimes, it reminds me of the passage in Job where he looks at his friends and says, 'O that you would be altogether silent, that for you would be wisdom'. It's like, hey guys, do something intelligent and shut up.

At any rate, Darwinism cannot be removed from scientific thought based on scientific research. Darwinism is not science it's metaphysics and spans legal, political and social philosophies ad infinitum ad nasuem. Darwinism does not qualify even as a theory in any way that makes sense. He simply presented the naturalists of his day with a naturalistic assumption applied uniformly across the entire history of life on this planet.

Scientists historically and currently bash Darwinism to pieces on a regular basis. It never goes away because science has absolutly nothing to do with it. You never disprove an a priori assumption, it's a self-evident fact. Darwinism is based on a now defunct theory known as the blending of characterisics which was completely dismissed with the rise of Mendelian genetics. Which brings up another point worth mentioning, Mendelian genetics has never needed Darwinism for anything. It is not an improvement of Darwinism it refutes all the fundamental assumptions associated with it. When Darwinism can't beat 'em some atheistic/agnostic philsopher will come along and simple blend them.

Evolution as science is as much a part of natural science as the theory of gravity or the table of elements. Evolution as natural history is pure, undiluted supposition modified from an ontological sythesis and fashioned into a modern myth. The single most important aspect of TOE with regards to Biblical theism is human history.

You can embrace the Scriptures as redemptive history or you can embrace Darwinism as a substitute, you can't have it both ways because Darwinians won't have it. Just don't expect me to believe this is based on science or a valid theory from empirical testing or observation. Darwinian a priori naturalistic assumptions precede, follow and permeate the entire spectrum of secular academics and scientific thought.

I have seen entirely too many propaganda parades to think of Darwinism as benign or remotely compatable with Christian theism.

Thanks for the thread BD, it was some pretty good satire and a thought provoking piece on the Austrian confrence.

Grace and peace,
Mark

 

[shernren]

You can embrace the Scriptures as redemptive history or you can embrace Darwinism as a substitute, you can't have it both ways because Darwinians won't have it. Just don't expect me to believe this is based on science or a valid theory from empirical testing or observation. Darwinian a priori naturalistic assumptions precede, follow and permeate the entire spectrum of secular academics and scientific thought.

I have seen entirely too many propaganda parades to think of Darwinism as benign or remotely compatable with Christian theism.

Your dogmatism is too far removed from reality to be of much practical use. Remember this?

Your neat categorical theory is falling to pieces. I firmly accept evolution as the best explanation for the generation of currently observable biodiversity. I also accept Biblical theism in its every nuance (even more than some creationists who, say, think God would not use evolution because He would get impatient waiting - what a strange conception!). What explanation do you have for me, a Darwinist Biblical theist? I am either a flagrant liar, hopelessly deluded, or simply nonexistent, and I am waiting impatiently for you to tell me which I am.

As for being a Biblical literalist and fundamentalist from Genesis 12 to Revelations 22 - by no means! I am quite ironically in the same boat as vossler who endlessly has to elaborate on the meaning of "literalism" as it is applied to him. I simply read the Bible, and I read it with the knowledge that the same God who wrote it created creation, and thus everything I know to be true about creation can be brought to bear on everything I know to be true about the Bible and vice versa. Even YECs have to stretch Genesis 7-8 when they are faced with geological facts that they don't have the guts to deny. Why should I be ashamed about bringing everything I know about God's creation to the table when thinking about God's Bible?

What am I, mark? A flagrant liar, hopelessly deluded, or simply nonexistent? You haven't answered; I doubt you will.

http://christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=44318489&postcount=124

 

[shernren]

And isn't Altenburg in Germany?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altenburg

 

[vossler]

What am I, mark? A flagrant liar, hopelessly deluded, or simply nonexistent? You haven't answered; I doubt you will.

Oooh, oooh can I answer that.

There is but only one possible answer. You're certainly not a flagrant liar (I don't even think you're a frequent or habitual liar although I could be wrong ) and you're obviously not nonexistent (although sometimes I wish you were ).

 

[Mallon]

Got to love it when those who haven't devoted themselves to the study of God's creation imply that those of us who have are somehow deluded about the issue.

Ballsy.

 

[shernren]

We all have the right to our opinions however misinformed they may be.

 

[shernren]

Bumpity bump. (A question finally too hard for mark to answer? )

What am I, mark? A flagrant liar, hopelessly deluded, or simply nonexistent? You haven't answered; I doubt you will.

http://christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=44318489&postcount=124

 

[busterdog]

At any rate, Darwinism cannot be removed from scientific thought based on scientific research. Darwinism is not science it's metaphysics and spans legal, political and social philosophies ad infinitum ad nasuem. Darwinism does not qualify even as a theory in any way that makes sense. He simply presented the naturalists of his day with a naturalistic assumption applied uniformly across the entire history of life on this planet.

How is it that one can entertain two notions in the same brain or institution: 1. intelligent design is a basis for dismissal and censure; 2. snowflakes and DNA self organize?

Yes, it is metaphysics. Like voodoo is metaphysics, because voodoo is the art of doing serious damage to your enemy by metaphysical means. An email to the Dean: "Professor Wallace is a thestic, hegemonistic embarrassment to science, since he has published against Darwin in the name of Intelligent Design." Not exactly pins in a effigy, but the effect is the same.

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/playgroundvideo3.swf

The words these people use are funny. Ben Stein nailed them. Dawkins is "hostile" to a "rival doctrine." Watch the clip at about 3/4 through.

Imagine that, hostility to competing ideas.

 

[mark kennedy]

What explanation do you have for me, a Darwinist Biblical theist? I am either a flagrant liar, hopelessly deluded, or simply nonexistent, and I am waiting impatiently for you to tell me which I am.

I think you are dishonest but I don't consider you a liar. I don't think for a minute you are deluded, I think you are just taken in by the spirit of the age.

I keep trying to tell you that I'm not the enemy but our philosophical moorings keep us from actually agreeing. If you were going to be honest with yourself you would have to ask yourself some fundamental questions with regards to our origins. The most important being why this stubborn refusal to accept Creationism as an alternative to Darwinism.

We can do this one of two ways, you can accept the propositional truth of the common ancestor or you can face the possibility that God did indeed act and consider the implications of a special creation event.

Your choice.

 

[mark kennedy]

How is it that one can entertain two notions in the same brain or institution: 1. intelligent design is a basis for dismissal and censure; 2. snowflakes and DNA self organize?

You can entertain as many possibilities as you like but you can only understand the truth. The truth is that evolution has very little to do with Biology.

Yes, it is metaphysics. Like voodoo is metaphysics, because voodoo is the art of doing serious damage to your enemy by metaphysical means. An email to the Dean: "Professor Wallace is a thestic, hegemonistic embarrassment to science, since he has published against Darwin in the name of Intelligent Design." Not exactly pins in a effigy, but the effect is the same.

I'll check out the link later but Metaphysics is a theory of everything. Science is a very bad place to start when building a Metaphysical philosophy and fails to define very important central terms. It's all built on a false assumption that they refuse to accept alternatives to their assumption.

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/playgroundvideo3.swf

The words these people use are funny. Ben Stein nailed them. Dawkins is "hostile" to a "rival doctrine." Watch the clip at about 3/4 through.

Imagine that, hostility to competing ideas.

I'll be back and check the clip, I'll let you know what my thoughts are then.

Grace and peace,
Mark

Edited to add:

Ben Stein has nailed the hypocrisy of Darwinians down but he is not the first and won't be the last. It's the status quo and they won't go quietly.

That is the most important film I will see this year. Ben Stein is my hero. Thanks BD, it's refreshing to see people wake up to the ongoing conspiracy that is Darwinism.

 

[shernren]

I think you are dishonest but I don't consider you a liar. I don't think for a minute you are deluded, I think you are just taken in by the spirit of the age.

So dishonest people aren't liars, and deceived people aren't deluded? You really have a way with words mark.

If I am taken in by "the spirit of the age", then pray tell what this spirit might be? Perhaps it is the denial of the existence of God - but I believe God exists. Perhaps it is the denial of supernatural miracles - but I believe miracles happen and I have witnessed them firsthand. Perhaps it is the denial of the inspiration of the Bible - but I believe that the Bible is divinely inspired and in fact the text leads me to reject creationism as much as scientific facts do. Perhaps it is the denial of orthodox doctrine - but I am a Calvinist Trinitarian and people far more fundamentally creationist than me have propounded far worse heresies than I have.

The fact is that if this "spirit of the age" has left me a Bible-believing, miracle-trusting, Trinitarian Christian, then perhaps it is not much of a spirit at all. Perhaps the dogmatism is only in your head.

I keep trying to tell you that I'm not the enemy but our philosophical moorings keep us from actually agreeing. If you were going to be honest with yourself you would have to ask yourself some fundamental questions with regards to our origins. The most important being why this stubborn refusal to accept Creationism as an alternative to Darwinism.

Really? You are not the enemy? But you have said yourself:

You can embrace the Scriptures as redemptive history or you can embrace Darwinism as a substitute, you can't have it both ways because Darwinians won't have it.

Well to me, if I embraced the Scriptures as redemptive history (and I do), then anyone who did not would be an enemy to me in some way, since they are enemies with God to reject His Scriptures. And if I believed that all Darwinism was predicated on rejecting the Scriptures as redemptive history, and I believed that all who rejected the Scriptures as redemptive history were enemies in some way, then I would have to believe that all Darwinism was an enemy to me, and that all Darwinists are.

You are right that I am not your enemy. But it is only precisely because I embrace the Scriptures as redemptive history. Doesn't that throw a spanner in your tidy dualism? If Darwinism is antithetical to Christianity, how can I be a Darwinist and yet not your enemy?

In any case, my "stubborn refusal" to accept Creationism is really just a reasoned view of the evidence at hand. You and your views have consistently failed to explain almost all the physical evidence surrounding evolution, whether they be cranial capacities or genetic traits. Even creationists when they try, by "baraminology", to separate animals into kinds, cannot avoid lumping humans with apes - they can only separate them on shoddy theological bases instead of biological facts. I was once a creationist too. Physical evidence has brought me where I am, and physical evidence will get me out - if only you had any!

We can do this one of two ways, you can accept the propositional truth of the common ancestor or you can face the possibility that God did indeed act and consider the implications of a special creation event.

Your choice.

Of course God did indeed act in a special creation event: God used evolution to create humanity.

 

[shernren]

How is it that one can entertain two notions in the same brain or institution: 1. intelligent design is a basis for dismissal and censure; 2. snowflakes and DNA self organize?

By actually knowing what self-organization is as a scientific concept, instead of waving it around like a wooden sword in a school play ...

 

[busterdog]

By actually knowing what self-organization is as a scientific concept, instead of waving it around like a wooden sword in a school play ...

Darwin may be like a long tail cat in a room full of rockers, but so what? As for your "wooden sword", why does that have any content? I find none. Enough with the freakin' metaphors, like "self-organizing."

What the h e double hockey sticks are you people talking about?

Try talking about ID without talking about the (presumed) character or politics of the people involved. It is a very simple concept, like "self-organizing." Both are a bit vague in similar ways.

 

[MinervaMac]

Yes, its funny.

But what is it all about?



Revision. Just like neo-Darwinism was a revision.

Not a renunciation. Not a dismantling. And no, not a relapse either. Definitely not a retreat.

A revision. Maybe a major revision. Could be quite interesting. But haven't we all been expecting a revision sooner or later?

Hang on a second, I was over in the creationist forum before viewing the clip of the film 'Expelled', according to Ben Stein though not in as many words, evolutionary biologists are rigid, inflexible with regards to the toE, and fiercely opposed to any criticism of it, a revision would suggest that the ToE isn't perfect something Darwinian scientists can not stand to hear apparently

Seems to me the creationists want to have their cake and eat it too.