It is time to come out of the closet, dispel stereotypes, and continue fighting oppressive legislative inequality. Same-sex marriage is important, but on March 24th, atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists throughout the country will gather on the mall in Washington D.C. to celebrate what we’re told will be “the largest secular event in world history.” The eagerly anticipated 2012 Reason Rally will commence near the Washington Monument with the intent to “unify, energize, and embolden secular people nationwide, while dispelling the negative opinions held by so much of American society.” The focus is positive. The event will feature musicians, advocacy representatives, inspirational speakers, actors, poets, and even the high-schooler from Rhode Island who sued because of her school’s prayer poster.
This great camp meeting is a call for all those who are living a god-free lifestyle to join their comrades for support and appreciation: You are not alone. Indeed, reports the Reason Rally website (citing a 2008 American Religious Identification Survey), “the percentage of people with no religion affiliation grew in all fifty states.” How much? Who cares; it grew. And Richard Dawkins is coming.
To be fair, the website tries to say that this is not an anti-religious event, and reminds readers that theists are quite capable of political representation. But equally fair, it seems, is the question: What exactly is being celebrated if not freedom from the supposed oppression of religion and its vigorous opposition in the public square?
March 19th, 2012 | 11:07 am
“What exactly is being celebrated … ”
The growing consensus that while opinions on matters of public policy may be rooted in religious doctrine, private revelation or personal faith, nobody is expected to take them seriously unless they are supported with objective, empirical and publicly verifiable evidence and argumentation.
March 19th, 2012 | 11:56 am
As you said, “The focus is positive.” The human ability to figure things out, to question preconceptions and reach well-founded conclusions, perhaps?
There’s also little things like “Legislative equality“. Or does equal representation for some viewpoint necessarily involve opposition to others?
March 19th, 2012 | 12:17 pm
“growing consensus”: I hope, Felapton, you are aware this is an oxymoron. Maybe you mean “growing agreement”?
@Ray, Stating what one is in favor of will entail disagreement with others. But couldn’t the Rally do exactly what is claimed and support the positive with “objective, empirical and publicly verifiable evidence and argumentation” and leave the dissent to those that disagree?
Of course, the Rally’s very title, Reason Rally, conveys the problem. “Reason: we have it; you do not.” Atheism suffers from its self-definition as being against something. There’s no suggestion that atheists agree on where this leads them.
That said, it would be very good to see a Rally that voiced positive positions and demonstrated how such positions are best supported.
March 19th, 2012 | 12:23 pm
Exactly. This is why faith-based atheism seems so absurd to reasonable people. It is indeed faith-based. It can’t prove God isn’t there. It must take that belief on faith. It assumes lifeless matter mindlessly and accidentally assembled itself into the nanotechnology of life, which we now know is technology light years beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch.
There is not a single instance of significant functional complexity having come about mindlessly and accidentally that would make it reasonable to assume the astounding, massive functional complexity of the nanotechnololgy of life was a mindless accident. Not one. There are a plethora of instances of significant functional complexity having come about due to the work of an intelligent agent. It seems that as reliably as gravity makes things fall down and not up, intelligent agents are responsible for significant functional complexity.
This has no impact on faith-based atheism. Its faith is a blind, irrational faith based solely on what they desperately WANT to believe. As was pointed out, “… nobody is expected to take them seriously unless they are supported with objective, empirical and publicly verifiable evidence and argumentation.”
March 19th, 2012 | 1:01 pm
“There is not a single instance of significant functional complexity having come about mindlessly and accidentally that would make it reasonable to assume the astounding, massive functional complexity of the nanotechnololgy of life was a mindless accident.”
If this were true (which is doubtful) it would be an excellent reason not to believe in a phenomenon of such functional complexity that it could have been capable of designing living organisms. It would be an excellent reason not to believe in any gods.
In any case, it is certainly no reason to believe in the God of Christian faith, who is not only a phenomenon of functional complexity, but all good, all powerful, eternal, all just and all merciful as well. Anything which does not have these traditional divine attributes can only be called “God” in an empty sophistical sense.
March 19th, 2012 | 1:02 pm
Mike Melendez is right, the name says it all. Reason is opposed to religion, as if there hasn’t been a rational philosophical tradition in Christianity going back at least to Augustine. I don’t know as much about Judaism, but Moses Maimonedes was certainly not irrational. Even Islam had a brief period of rationalism (too bad it didn’t stick). The very name of the rally is an insult, probably intentional, to religious believers.
March 19th, 2012 | 1:17 pm
So can I infer from the last paragraph of this entry that the creation of the religious right and their public meetings have the intention to manifest a “vigorous opposition” to secularist politics “on the public square”?
March 19th, 2012 | 1:34 pm
Felapton writes:
“The growing consensus that while opinions on matters of public policy may be rooted in religious doctrine, private revelation or personal faith, nobody is expected to take them seriously unless they are supported with objective, empirical and publicly verifiable evidence and argumentation.”
The idea that we ought to obey growing consensuses is not a belief based on “objective, empirical and publicly verifiable evidence and argumentation,” since it is a normative belief, and is difficult to know what sort of empirical referent would count as establishing that belief.
All you’re doing is saying, “Look, lots of people are starting to believe X.” But why is that a warrant to believe X, since I can easily imagine the opposite occurring and you rejecting that consensus because it is “unreasonable”? It seems to be rather shaky ground on which to establish something rationally.
Try again.
March 19th, 2012 | 1:37 pm
You are taking it on faith that it’s not true, I assume, since you provided no examples of significant functional complexity that we know came about mindlessly and accidentally.
If it is true that significant functional complexity doesn’t come about mindlessly and accidentally, that says nothing about the functional complexity of the intelligence that is responsible for it. That it does is your faith-based belief. If this isn’t the case, please explain to us what you know about the functional complexity of immaterial, rational thought.
March 19th, 2012 | 3:07 pm
Felapton – harry and I have gone over ‘functional complexity’ before…
March 19th, 2012 | 3:08 pm
Reason’s relation to religion is not what the atheists leading the Reason Rally claim it is; and its relation to the New Atheism isn’t either.
March 19th, 2012 | 3:08 pm
Mike – Why does it have to be “Reason: we have it; you do not”? Why can’t it be, “Let’s apply reason to this topic, too”?
March 19th, 2012 | 3:09 pm
It appears that I formed a link wrong on that last comment. It is http://book.truereason.org/excerpt/
March 19th, 2012 | 3:24 pm
@Ray: “Mike – Why does it have to be “Reason: we have it; you do not”? Why can’t it be, “Let’s apply reason to this topic, too”?”
Plenty of people have, from Plato to Augustine to Pascal and on into the modern day. If you want to celebrate atheism or secularism, fine, but I don’t see the point in celebrating a non-belief. If you want to celebrate reason, fine, but it seems a bit pretentious and self-congratulatory. If you’re suggesting some innate connection between the two, you seem to ignore most of human history. For example, it was the Catholic Church, not atheists, who created the European university system. Science began in a thoroughly religious Christendom. Many eminently reasonable people have put forward many perfectly reasonable arguments for believing in God. So the whole “we’re clearing away the fog of religious belief and finally letting people use their brains” narrative seems pretty arrogant and even unreasonable to me.
March 19th, 2012 | 3:53 pm
As a Christian, I think this is a wonderful development, making visible what has been heretofore only suggested. Nonbelievers have done a good job of attacks via fashionableness. Now they will be vulnerable to the same.
March 19th, 2012 | 4:05 pm
@harry: “It assumes lifeless matter mindlessly and accidentally assembled itself into the nanotechnology of life”
So do certain members of First Thing’s advisory council. Careful.
March 19th, 2012 | 4:31 pm
Hello, Barry Arrington,
Well, they are free to believe that, although it should be pointed out to those for whom it matters, that doing so is contrary to Catholic belief.
If the Universe and everything within it came into existence through the Word (8), and continues to exist through the Word (7), and His providential care of it is “concrete and immediate” right down to the very “least things,” which would include the activity of each and every subatomic particle, such that He has “absolute sovereignty over the course of events,” (5) including acting upon that which He brought into being not just indirectly through “secondary causes,” but sometimes in a direct way that demonstrates His personal “primacy and absolute Lordship” over it all (6), then I’d say that Catholics, at least, ought to agree with Dawkins “that the doctrine of creation requires a Divine Tinkerer.” Thank you Mr. Dawkins for straightening out the Catholics; even though we wouldn’t put it quite that way, your point is well taken. God holds the Universe in existence from instant to instant and manages it in a “concrete and immediate” way that sometimes includes His direct, supernatural intervention.
If heathens who are intelligent enough to investigate the world “have no excuse” for failing to find its Author, and failing to see that it is the work of a supremely intelligent Master Artificer (1), then Catholic scientists who scoff at Intelligent Design, which provides the heathens with an excuse, certainly aren’t acting in charity towards such heathens. I wonder if atheism’s perversion of contemporary science hasn’t “darkened” the minds of such Catholics. (2) The Universe and the life within it shout to those who will but listen that that they were intelligently designed by the ultimate Master Craftsman and Artist Who reveals Himself to us through His works. This is the belief of *orthodox* Catholics. (3)(4)
(1) Yes, naturally stupid are all who are unaware of God, and who, from good things seen, have not been able to discover Him-who-is, or, by studying the works, have not recognized the Artificer. … let them know how much the Master of these excels them, since He was the very source of beauty that created them. And if they have been impressed by their power and energy, let them deduce from these how much mightier is He that has formed them, since through the grandeur and beauty of the creatures we may, by analogy, contemplate their Author. … *they have no excuse*: if they are capable of acquiring enough knowledge to be able to investigate the world, how have they been so slow to find its Master?
– Wisdom 13:1,3-5,8-9 (Jerusalem Bible)
(2) For what can be known about God is perfectly plain to them, since God has made it plain to them: ever since the creation of the world, the invisible existence of God and his everlasting power have been clearly seen by the mind’s understanding of created things. And so these people *have no excuse*: they knew God and yet they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but their arguments became futile and their uncomprehending minds were darkened. While they claimed to be wise, in fact they were growing so stupid …
– Romans 1:19-22 (Jerusalem Bible)
(3) If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with *certainty* from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: *let him be anathema.*
– Vatican Council I, can. 2 § I
(4) … The existence of God the Creator can be known with *certainty* through his works, by the light of human reason …
– Catechism of the Catholic Church, #286 (Cf. Vatican Council I, can. 2 § I)
(5) The witness of Scripture is unanimous that the solicitude of divine providence is *concrete and immediate*; God cares for all, from the *least things* to the great events of the world and its history. The sacred books powerfully affirm God’s *absolute sovereignty* over the course of events …
– Catechism of the Catholic Church, #303
(6) And so we see the Holy Spirit, the principal author of Sacred Scripture, often attributing actions to God without mentioning any *secondary causes.* This is not a “primitive mode of speech”, but a profound way of recalling *God’s primacy and absolute Lordship* over history and the world …
– Catechism of the Catholic Church, #304
(7) God created the universe and *keeps it in existence* by his Word, the Son “upholding the universe by his word of power” (Heb 1:3), and by his Creator Spirit, the giver of life.
– Catechism of the Catholic Church, #320
(8) … the Word was God. … Through him all things came into being, not one thing came into being except through him.
– John 1:1,3
March 19th, 2012 | 5:47 pm
@harry “Well, they are free to believe that, although it should be pointed out to those for whom it matters, that doing so is contrary to Catholic belief.”
No, no. Dr. Barr insists that this is perfectly consistent with Catholic teaching. You’ll have to take it up with him.
March 19th, 2012 | 6:37 pm
Well, they are free to believe that, although it should be pointed out to those for whom it matters, that doing so is contrary to Catholic belief.
harry,
I don’t think Catholic belief is incompatible with belief in evolution, including a belief that life arose on earth from non-life. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water without direct intervention from God. Why couldn’t a much, much more complex sequence of events result in living matter?
March 19th, 2012 | 6:53 pm
Hey Ray. The reason, if you’ll pardon the usage, is that “the topic” is not specified in the title. Indeed, only Reason is specified. So presumably they have something new to say about “reason”. If they meant “Let’s apply reason to this topic, too”, then “reason” would not be unique. I’m pretty sure they have nothing new to say about “reason”, so they must referring to “reason” as what differentiates this rally. Having noted that, I suspect the usage is subconscious. At best, they, the conference organizers, are saying that they will demonstrate better reason. Hopefully they keep the “better than” subject to themselves.
March 19th, 2012 | 7:47 pm
Hi, David Nickol,
I didn’t say “Catholic belief is incompatible with belief in evolution.” It is incompatible with the notion that the nanotechnology life is a mindless accident.
To assume that the astounding functional complexity of the nanotechnology of life is a mindless accident isn’t just incompatible with Catholic belief, it is incompatible with rationality.
March 19th, 2012 | 10:56 pm
Are you a Catholic convert, Harry?
March 20th, 2012 | 2:57 am
felapton needs to describe how the veracity of something like “genocide is always wrong” can be firmly established by empiricism and the scientific method…. but it seems he’s been chased out of the room by thomas aquinas.
he should also take a hint from hitler, who at least had the fortitude to admit that the science of eugenics was a logical consequence of darwinism.
March 20th, 2012 | 8:23 am
Mike Melendez – What about “World Youth Day”? Is that only about young people, or is it about Catholicism and young people? Do you object to the title of that rally?
March 20th, 2012 | 8:52 am
Hello, Joe Mc. Faul,
I am a revert. I was raised Catholic, but converted to hedonism as a young man. ;o) As bad as that was, in a way it was a good thing. I discovered the irony in the aggressive pursuit of pleasure making one absolutely miserable. It was good in another way as well. Knowing that living according to my hedonistic beliefs had brought me everything but happiness, I knew there must be something better, more meaningful and fulfilling. I looked for that, free to decide for myself what made sense to me, disregarding what various authority figures had told me to believe as a child and start from scratch.
It was important to me that whatever “truth” I was going to live by made sense to me – that it was logical and reasonable. That is just who I am, and is probably why I ended up spending most of my adult life working with technology, mostly the software side of it, but also with hardware to some extent. (I was working with hardware back in the days when one could drag out an oscilloscope and determine which diode was bad – you could actually *see* the electronic components. ;o) Anyway, to make a long story short, as an adult I rediscovered Catholicism and it made more sense to me than anything else.
My technology background is probably why the notion that multi-tasking, self-repairing, self-replicating technology that includes communication systems with error detection and correction, digitally encoded instructions stored in biological memory that are read by cellular processes to instantiate intricate, three dimensional cellular machinery needed for metabolism and reproduction (think CAD/CAM), along with the necessary quality control mechanisms, and much, much more – the notion that all that is a mindless accident – strikes me as absolutely ridiculous. All one has to do to see this is to attempt to build such technology yourself. Or it might to easier to just read the works of Don Johnson, who first got a PhD in Chemistry from Michigan State, and then another PhD in Computer Science from Univ. Minnesota. He wholeheartedly accepted the molecules-to-man as a mindless accident indoctrination he had been subjected to until he got into computer science, whereupon he realized its absurdity.
Software does exactly what the programmer tells it to do – so it mocks you when what it does is absurd. Software development forces one to learn to continually reexamine one’s assumptions, since when they are incorrect the computer so rudely demonstrates that fact. It seems those who have learned to do that are the first to see the absurdity of the notion that the nanotechnology of life is a mindless accident.
That was probably more of an answer than you really wanted. ;o)
March 20th, 2012 | 9:19 am
I am a creationist. (Oh horrors, he’s finally admitted it.) But if you believe in reason, all the statement means is that I believe there is a creator, a God. There are Creationists with specific ideas as to how God did it, not infrequently based on a literal reading of the Old Testament or TANAKH, if you prefer.
I am also an evolutionist. Yet, in my case, I believe that is how God did it, at least in our best current understanding. To me, creationism and evolution are not incompatible. I believe that is fully allowable in Catholic belief. Evolution is not required but not ruled out. Catholicism, following the God believed in, leaves the how to science.
I do not understand those who want to put limits on God, whether keeping Him in a book or forbidding Him the means of evolution. I have no dog in that fight except to note the two sides are more alike than different.
As to when and how God intervenes, I don’t think we know. We don’t know that hydrogen and oxygen combine “without God’s intervention”. He could cause it directly and construct the apparent causal chain we see or He could act to launch the chain at some point. At the least, He created the circumstances that allow that chain to work. We do know, we can follow the causal chain and predict our future, within limits. There is no scientific guarantee that the next time won’t be different, just the preponderance of the evidence.
March 20th, 2012 | 12:57 pm
As Blessed John Henry Newman postulated:
“What are the phenomena of the external world, but a divine mode of conveying to the mind the realities of existence, individuality, and the influence of being on being, the best possible, though beguiling the imagination of most men with a harmless but unfounded belief in matter as distinct from the impressions on their senses?”
March 20th, 2012 | 1:39 pm
Thnaks Harry,
I find that many, but not all, good Catholics are often not sure what the truth is and often find that answers don’t leap off the pages of either the Bible or the Catechism.
While I appreciate your software expertise, I am not sure that it translates well to biology.
I am also not sure you can read the Catechism or the Bible in such a binary way. Orthodox Catholics can hold a variety of opinions on a number of subejcts, and I have to remind myself often that my opinion on a particular subject is not the only opinion that may be held by orthodox Catholics. Young Earth Creationism, for example, is an opinion that can be held by orthodox Catholics. I believe it is both bad science and bad theology but I can’t claim it’s not orthodox.
Economics is another area where a number of different views (within very broad limits) are all orthodox. Orthodox Catholics can and do believe in universal medical care, for example, and also believe in some form of self-insurance, self reliance and pay as you go.
I find that some who believe they have all the answers also believe their opinion is the only orthodox opinion. The Church gives wide latitude to almost all opinions.
March 20th, 2012 | 7:08 pm
To further strengthen the point that this rally will be anything but reasonable:
http://www.truereason.org/news/messages-to-and-from-david-silverman-american-atheists/
March 20th, 2012 | 9:14 pm
Careful, joe.
Orthodoxy is what is taught as true. If the church has no position, there is no orthodoxy of that subject, at least, in that church. As to whether God created the universe, the Orthodox answer for Catholics is a resoundng, “Yes!”
What harry is talking about is reason, not religion. If he’s into software, which BTW is the most complex thing we humans create, he knows how bad we are at it. And yet, software’s complexity pales into insignificance compared to, e.g., a living cell, let alone a functioning human. If I understand harry, he’s saying something like: given what it takes to put together software how can I possibly believe that life just fell together and worked. It’s a variation of Paley’s watchmaker argument but very much on steroids. Paley’s argument is more ridiculed than refuted. Not that Paley’s argument is absolute. Just that, most counterarguments can be summed up, “If I were God, I wouldn’t do it that way, therefore there is no God.”
Those who make software know a lot about iteration and getting it wrong, starting simple and growing complex. They’ve even tried software design by evolution using the mindless ability of computers to endlessly repeat and select winners after each iteration. Automatic software evolution remains a research topic but isn’t effective in practice. And that’s with the evolution designed by humans. The idea that natural evolution “proves” that design isn’t needed is just another misconception along our path to greater knowledge.
March 21st, 2012 | 8:13 am
So far, so good.
Automatic software evolution remains a research topic but isn’t effective in practice.
Ah, but this depends entirely on what you mean by ‘effective’. In terms of designing software useful to humans, it’s only been of middling success. For certain classes of problems (e.g. designing network topologies, or shapes of particular parts of systems) they can be very useful. Designing an entire engine involves such a large search space that present computers can’t manage it in timely fashion, though.
But in terms of optimizing the survival of reproducing programs, however, evolutionary algorithms have been quite successful. Systems like Avida (and Tierra before it) have illustrated just how effective ‘mindless’ evolutionary principles can be. (I know, I reimplemented Tierra myself, replicated its results, and got new ones.)
March 21st, 2012 | 8:14 am
(Last link is broken; see here.)
March 21st, 2012 | 10:24 am
Hi, Ray,
The very existence of an algorithm means there is a process or set of rules it follows. How is it that the rules for your evolutionary algorithms to follow even existed? Those rules, ultimately, must take into consideration the environment provided by an intelligently designed computer operating system and the intelligently designed computer hardware in which your software executes. Did that environment come about mindlessly?
If it is silly to theorize about how functionally complex computer software could have evolved accidentally, in a context of true mindlessness, from simpler software, and completely asinine to just assume that the necessary environment required in order for that software to execute and “evolve” in its functional complexity – an environment provided by the computer hardware and its operating system – also came about mindlessly and accidentally, then it is nothing short of profoundly irrational to assume that the nanotechnology of life, the necessary fine tuning of the Universe that was required to make life possible, and the fine tuning and precision of the environment on Earth that was required for that first life form to “execute” so it could start evolving — all came about mindlessly and accidentally. And how did that first replicating life form come about to begin with since the ability to replicate itself requires a functional complexity that can’t be explained as having been brought about by evolution because that is what we are attempting to get started. This problem leaves us with hair-brained theories about how lifeless matter “evolved” into life capable of evolving that have no naturally occurring phenomena to substantiate them. The only basis for them is fanatically held atheistic “religious” belief.
March 21st, 2012 | 11:06 am
Harry, we went over that on our very first go-round.
“There are two distinct propositions here, and you are conflating them. Proposition one: Under some circumstances, complex functionality can arise and improve without intelligent management and guidance… Now, you further contend – proposition two – that those circumstances can only come about via intelligent action.” I pointed out problems with that there.
And here: “The fact that humans can build tornado simulators doesn’t mean that tornadoes are individually crafted by intelligence – especially when we can demonstrate that the conditions in the simulators can also arise “mindlessly”.”
As I said at the end of the same exchange, “I don’t like accusing someone of willful disregard of their opponent’s points, and you seem like a nice enough guy, but it’s getting very hard to avoid that conclusion.”
March 21st, 2012 | 11:27 am
We can build tornado simulators because we understand how the laws of physics bring them about. We do NOT understand how the laws of physics can bring about the nanotechnology of life. So, let’s combine chance – dumb luck – with the laws of physics and see if we can figure out how we might accidentally arrive at the nanotechnology of life. That just doesn’t work either. This is because there are limits to what mindless chance combined with the laws of physics can bring about even with lottery-winning luck, which is why it is silly to theorize about how a tornado might accidentally assemble a house with functioning heating and air conditioning – and even sillier to theorize about how chance and the laws of physics could bring about the nanotechnology of life.
Life is a spectacular exception to what a rational mind can expect chance and the laws of physics to be capable of bringing about. It is an exception with an intended meaning and purpose.
March 21st, 2012 | 2:37 pm
harry –
…bring them about mindlessly. Just to be clear.
As I’ve been noting all along, though, we do have some suggestive hypotheses about how that might have happened. We also have plenty of evidence that ‘mindless’ – but decidedly not “dumb luck” – natural selection can cause increasing complexity over time.
That’s what’s so depressing about this. I continually point to the key fact that human technology doesn’t replicate with occasional errors. Replication is the hallmark of life, and the prerequisite for evolution. We have scads of evidence that, once replication with variation gets started, increasing complexity is to be expected.
A tornado isn’t going to assemble a house, no. A single tiny seed crystal dropped in a solution can result in a gem, though, eventually. And – if an autocatalyzing chemical reaction can get started ‘mindlessly’, which no longer seems quite so impossible – then evolution’s got something to work with.
March 21st, 2012 | 4:40 pm
Where do we find naturally occurring replication of lifeless matter which has made significant progress towards the functional complexity of that which we would all agree was “life”? For that matter, where do we find naturally occurring replication of chemical units at all?
An “autocatalyzing chemical reaction” taking place in a lab – an intelligently designed environment – doesn’t prove anything except the necessity of the involvement of an intelligent agent for such a thing to happen.
Don’t you see that even if science does far more than bring about an “autocatalyzing chemical reaction” in the lab, by eventually building the equivalent of the massive functional complexity of a single celled life form from scratch in the lab – which I doubt will ever happen – that the billions of man hours that were required to do that will only prove the necessity of the involvement of an intelligent agent in real life coming about?
March 22nd, 2012 | 8:35 am
harry –
We’re going in circles. To quote from our very first exchange: “Organic chemicals don’t lay around for long periods of time on Earth right now – we have too many modern living things scooping them up.”
And here’s a much shorter circle. You’ve already conceded that tornadoes can happen without intelligent intervention. We can also create them in the lab, but creating them in the lab doesn’t “prove… the necessity of the involvement of an intelligent agent for such a thing to happen”. In other, very explicit words: being able to cause something in a lab is not proof the same phenomenon can’t happen ‘by itself’ outside a lab.
If we recreate conditions present on the early Earth, and we can show that autocatalytic reactions can arise in such circumstances, then we have evidence that such things can arise without intelligent intervention, in the exact same way we can show how tornadoes arise by replicating the conditions inside a thunderstorm. You accept the latter, but refuse to even acknowledge the former.
Again, from our first exchange: “We haven’t had a few hundred million years to experiment with this stuff yet… but even in a few decades, we have found some suggestive results”.
March 22nd, 2012 | 10:49 am
So, you offer an explanation of why a scenario that might make your theory slightly less dubious doesn’t exist currently.
Darwin was a friend of Charles Lyell, the foremost geologist of the times. He read Lyell’s Principles of geology, being an attempt to explain the former changes of the Earth’s surface, by reference to causes now in operation and understood the unscientific nature of basing a theory on imaginary scenarios that might have existed in past. Darwin offered an explanation of what caused life to evolve with known causes currently in operation.
Let me help you get your argument in context. The functional complexity of a modern, automated factory is nothing in comparison to the functional complexity of life. You would need a completely automated factory, requiring no intervention at all by intelligent agents in the manufacturing process, that manufactured, among other things, more automated factories like itself and gathered the necessary raw materials to do so itself, to even make a small amount of progress towards reaching the functional complexity of life. Even if there were organic chemicals in abundance at some time in the past, that helps make the case that the emergence of the functional complexity of life came about mindlessly like finding that a tornado had driven a nail into a board makes the case that a tornado might assemble a house.
Of course. But what happens in a lab can be so artificially contrived that it says nothing about what happens naturally. Using a wind tunnel to demonstrate that boards can be forced into some kind of assemblage by high winds doesn’t make it any more likely that a tornado might build a house. What you need to demonstrate is how massive functional complexity can come about mindlessly. That will be tough as there are simply no instances of that happening and no reason to believe it ever will or ever has happened. Or should we double-check and see if the inscription on Rosetta Stone is actually the lucky, accidental result of erosion? And those prehistoric cave paintings – are we sure they aren’t just the accidental coloration of those cave walls?
March 22nd, 2012 | 12:28 pm
We shouldn’t need a few hundred millions years to do what mindless, lifeless, dumb matter found so easy to do that it happened accidentally.
For example, it would take nearly forever for mindless processes to accidentally assemble a typical jigsaw puzzle correctly. We should be able to that in a matter of hours.
It would take nearly forever for mindless processes to accidentally assemble millions of Scrabble pieces such that they accidentally spelled out a factually correct encyclopedia. Intelligent agents could do that in a matter of a few years.
The notion that something far more difficult to assemble than a correct encyclopedia — beings capable of authoring them — came about mindlessly and accidentally in a matter of only a few billion years is absurd. The only reasonable explanation for that happening so quickly is if it was the result of the work of a Supremely Intelligent Agent.
March 22nd, 2012 | 12:42 pm
harry –
That doesn’t mean what you think it means. For example, why do we propose the oxygen catastrophe? Because we find mineral formations in ancient rocks that cannot form in the presence of significant free oxygen in the atmosphere. Rather than posit different laws of chemistry, we suppose causes now in operation – i.e. the laws of chemistry – and conclude that there wasn’t free oxygen in the atmosphere then.
Remember when I pointed out the Oklo natural nuclear reactor? That couldn’t happen now – U-235 concentrations are too low – but 1.7 billion years ago (assuming causes now in operation like the laws of physics) there was more U-235 around.
We know that there wasn’t any life for a billion years or so after the Earth formed because we don’t find any signs of it. We also know of processes that will form and/or deposit organic chemicals on Earth then. So, we can conclude that organic chemicals could exist in forms and concentrations not in evidence now because life wasn’t around then. So, yeah – “Organic chemicals don’t lay around for long periods of time on Earth right now – we have too many modern living things scooping them up.”
And, besides your bare assertion, do you have any evidence that the experiments and such that have been done are “so artificially contrived”?
Except that nails – say it with me now – don’t replicate themselves with occasional errors. Crystals in solution are an example of something that does. The fact that we can synthesize gemstones in the lab doesn’t mean some intelligent force planted the gemstones we find in the Earth.
And we don’t just assume ‘organic chemicals, therefore life’. Abiogenesis research focuses on figuring out exactly how the ‘first replicators’ got going. They may not succeed – but the idea is not automatically invalid and I’ve pointed you (a la horses and water, unfortunately) to suggestive results found already, in only a few decades of research.
(To put that in perspective, the history of the Earth is ~4.5 billion years. If that were represented as an area the size of Manhattan, the 60 years since the Miller-Urey experiment would be… a square a little less than three feet on a side. Less than one block in a sidewalk.)
“We have scads of evidence that, once replication with variation gets started, increasing complexity is to be expected.” Then we have 75 million times as long as we’ve been looking at abiogenesis for complexity to develop…
March 22nd, 2012 | 1:30 pm
Nobody is saying that the laws of physics weren’t causes in operation in the past. Lyell saw the danger of the historical sciences making the mistake of launching new pseudo-sciences like abiogenesis (today’s alchemy) based on imaginary scenarios. For example, consider this excerpt from a University of California, San Diego web page. The late Stanley Miller, of the famous Miller-Urey experiment, taught there for years. UCSD is not exactly known for being a bastion of young earth creationism. The information on this web page can only be the result of a sudden and inexplicable fit of clear thinking on the part of the abiogenesis gang:
The Miller-Urey experiment played no small role in legitimizing today’s alchemy – abiogenesis – and the scenario they had imagined was all wrong. As noted in the excerpt, “A pile of bricks does not make a cathedral, and a collection of organic molecules does not make a living cell …” Or, as I put it previously, the presence of organic molecules is about as helpful to abiogenesis as finding that a tornado had driven a nail into a board is helpful in making “the case that a tornado might assemble a house.”
March 22nd, 2012 | 1:57 pm
As for your “anything we don’t understand we can assume replication took care of” approach to this, resorting to the “Replication of the Gaps,” well, it is full of holes.
Naturally occurring replication, even it it ever happened, wouldn’t begin to solve the technical issues. For example, the coding regions of DNA memory contain information. That information directs the execution of cellular processes such that they instantiate intricate protein machines that have useful functionality. I will assume for my purposes here that something like the DNA molecule has become a component in an as yet lifeless replicating chemical unit but its memory does not yet contain useful information. Every possible state of DNA memory, if copying errors eventually established each of those states at one time or another, would be gibberish, not useful information, until cellular processes existed to which the data can correspond. Yet there cannot be a process directed by the contents of DNA memory until it contains information, not gibberish. With mindlessness doing the engineering, both the useful information and a process directed by it would be kept from coming about by the absence of the other. Yet, somehow, they both came about. How do you suppose that happened?
Even if there was a miraculous “accidental” correspondence between the contents of DNA memory and a cellular process that came about that could be directed in its execution by those contents – which would be a miracle in itself – still another miracle is required. This is because a “process” – the operation of a computer CPU, for example – being directed by instructions read in from memory, does not mean it is being directed to do anything useful. The other miracle we need is for the information in DNA-like memory to be such that it can not only direct the execution of our miraculous cellular process, but that it also directs it such that it instantiates *useful* protein machines – not non-functional complexity, or useless intricacy.
There is nothing advantageous about expending energy creating that which is useless, so how would such a cellular process “evolve,” since its very existence would be a disadvantage until useful information in our DNA-like memory was mindlessly and accidentally arrived at, the likelihood of which is comparable to that of dumping out a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces and having them land such that they correctly assemble the puzzle. And if such a cellular process does miraculously come about, how does replication create data in memory that is “intelligent” information in the sense that it not only can direct the cellular process, but that it directs it to build *useful* protein machines, and arrives at that “intelligent” information quickly enough that the whole exercise isn’t tossed out as an expensive, harmful mistake by the mindless “evolutionary” process long before anything advantageous comes about?
Furthermore, there is the problem that our cellular process would begin without there being any useful information in memory yet, so there is a very good chance that what it instantiates will not be merely useless, but instead would bring about destructive functionality. Computer processes attempting to execute “instructions” that are not “intelligently designed” are going to cause the application or a simple operating system to crash. This is true of mindless, accidental modifications of correct “instructions” as well, which is the only kind of modification of to memory our mindless evolutionary process can make. How can it ever arrive at massive amounts of correct information? How could the mindless “evolution” of such a cellular process continue in spite of all these difficulties? How did data-driven cellular processes that instantiate useful, functionally complex protein machines ever come about mindlessly?
Mindless engineering is a really very far-fetched concept. Replication doesn’t come anywhere near explaining how very real, practical difficulties can be overcome by a mindless “evolutionary” process such that it could have assembled lifeless matter into life. As anyone knows who has created significant functional complexity that actually works, the tiniest modifications, even those that have been well thought out beforehand, often have large, destructive ramifications in terms of continued functionality if they aren’t exactly right. Mindlessness, of course, doesn’t ever put any thought into modifications at all, so more often than not its modifications will be destructive. It is extremely unlikely that mindless processes can arrive at massive functional complexity – so unlikely that it is simply irrational for truly objective science to resort to that first as an explanation of it — unless, of course, your atheistic religious beliefs require you to do that.
March 22nd, 2012 | 2:20 pm
Preach it, Harry. I’ve long found scientism a bore and the Church of Darwin insufferable, but I am always up for a lively dismantling of their sophistry from an articulate defender such as yourself. Godspeed, brother.
At the same time: better you than me. Just engaging these true believers in the nihil makes me weep for mankind. There are no greater advocates on fire for the faith than converts, except perhaps reverts like you (and me). We know what they’re missing. We’ve experienced their despair.
March 22nd, 2012 | 2:35 pm
harry – Discussing this with you is an endless case of deja vu. As I pointed out the last time you brought that quote up:
March 22nd, 2012 | 3:08 pm
And as I pointed out previously and currently:
And as for my explanation of the problems with mindless enginerring — the problems remain whether one discusses them in terms DNA or RNA or some other primitive predecessor to both. How do you get data-driven processes to evolve without the data that drives them? And how do you get the data without the process to which they much correspond? The key point is that he absence of one keeps the other from coming about. So neither can come about. And under what circumstances do such data and processes gradually evolve such that their inefficiency in the beginning doesn’t keep the whole exercise from being tossed as an evolutionary disadvantage long before they do anything useful? Yet somehow we ended up with data-driven cellular processes that create intricate, functioning cellular machinery. How did replication or any other mindless process make that happen? Of course, there is no problem at all if an intelligence knows what the data must be because it knows how the process is going to work and knows what the functionality of the resulting protein machines must be.
March 22nd, 2012 | 3:30 pm
March 22nd, 2012 | 3:33 pm
harry –
You’re already making poor assumptions.
Consider how proteins get made. Proteins are long chains of linked amino acids. A ribosome translates messenger-RNA, step-by-step, into a protein by ‘reading’ triplets of RNA (itself a long chain of nucleic acids), and attaching the appropriate amino acid to the growing chain.
Where’d the messenger-RNA come from? It was formed by a ribozyme ‘reading off’ the triplets of nucleic acids in DNA and building a strand of RNA.
Notice, by the way, just how intimately RNA is involved in every single step of this process. It’s an RNA molecule that reads the DNA, and makes messenger-RNA. Then it’s another RNA-based molecule that reads the messenger-RNA and builds the protein. That’s because RNA, unlike DNA, can act as both a data-storage medium (messenger-RNA), and an active enzyme guiding chemical processes (ribozymes).
DNA is a better, more stable data-storage medium than RNA. And proteins are generally better enzymes than RNA. But RNA, uniquely, can do both. There’s a good reason why the RNA world hypothesis was floated – RNA by itself could form a basic replicating system with something like a ‘metabolism’. And the fact that RNA is still so vital – so, in evolutionary terms, ‘highly conserved’ – across all forms of life is good evidence for that.
So the actual model is that ‘life’ as such got started as autocatalyzing sets of chemicals, probably RNA. Chemicals which, when the right raw materials are around, make more of themselves. With occasional mistakes.
Over time, some of those mistakes can lead to a ‘division of labor’, with some of the RNA taking on more of a ‘data storage’ role, and some taking on a ‘translation’ role, and others taking on a ‘functional’ role. (With lots of overlap, of course – in living things, the clean separation of functional elements that’s a hallmark of human technology is nowhere apparent. I pointed you to this article before, which shows that even the way proteins are coded plays a role in regulation of gene expression.) This avoids the ‘chicken and egg’ problem – there’s no “miraculous correspondence” because, at the start, the RNA is simultaneously data storage and functional mechanism in one.
But once you have even a weak separation of function, more variation becomes possible. DNA and RNA are very similar, chemically. The chemicals that can read RNA aren’t all that different from the ones that can read DNA. A molecule that reads both tolerably well is no stretch. Given that, a mixed storage system becomes possible. Some genes stored in RNA, others – perhaps even, at the start, only one – in DNA. (Note that the molecules that build RNA strands are also closely related to the ones that build DNA. Ever heard of reverse transcriptase?)
So, in this model, the ‘memory’ of the DNA would, at no point, fail to “contain useful information”. The same mechanisms that build and transcribe RNA could build and transcribe DNA, so the information surviving from the RNA-world could be ‘moved over’ into the DNA storage medium as it gradually grew to replace the original RNA-based storage. And the greater stability of DNA would offer a selective advantage to pressure that change.
This scenario is speculative, of course. But nothing – not one part of it – is logically or chemically impossible. Examples of every step of that process exist in various forms in living things today. And people are actively looking for evidence to confirm or dismiss it.
I know you understand computers, but I think the analogy between DNA and software is leading you astray. Modern computer software is analogous to DNA is some ways, yes – but there are very important fundamental differences, too. The ‘interpreters’ they run on are radically different. Modern computers are ‘brittle’ in the interest of efficiency. Living things are redundant in the interest of reliability.
For one thing, proteins don’t need to specify an exact address to interact with other proteins – it’s not like a computer program with a jump command. Proteins present complementary surfaces and wait to collide with the right ‘partner’. Secondly, computer opcodes come in a huge variety – literally billions of bit-patterns are valid opcodes. Whereas DNA is “Reduced Instruction Set Computing” with a vengeance – only four bits, and only 64 ‘opcodes’ (none of which take arguments) – and of those 64, most are duplicates!
I’ve pointed to Tierra and Avida before. The key things that Prof. Thomas Ray did when he made Tierra was create a different kind of computing system. It’s recognizably like standard CPUs in some ways, but with two key differences – subroutine calls don’t need specific addresses, they search by complements and templates. And second, there are only 32 opcodes, with no operands. And just those simple changes allowed an impressive amount of self-optimizing evolution. Seriously, try it yourself. Play around a little – I think you’ll find your intuitions confounded.
March 22nd, 2012 | 3:35 pm
(Whoops, not four bits – two bits!)
March 23rd, 2012 | 5:22 am
Obviously a single-celled life form is not a biological version of a computer. Yet many engineering issues are the same no matter what the context. However we arrived at data-driven processes directed by information-rich data to create the intricate, functional machinery used in the cell, that is what we ended up with, and whether such a configuration is in a single-celled life form or in a factory computer certain issues must have been resolved. One of them is “What is the correct information to place in memory?” Something will be in memory whether it be gibberish, or data correct enough to direct the process but not such that it does anything useful, or possibly such that it directs it to do something destructive, or correct information that will direct the process to create machines with useful functionality.
In the case of factory automation, we know the source of the information in memory. Ultimately, the source of that information is where information always originates – an intelligent agent. Only a rational mind can be “informed” such that it can translate that knowledge into symbols – an alphabet of some kind. The coding regions of DNA memory contain assembly instructions – information – represented symbolically.
As in a computer where a sequence of units of memory can represent a letter of an alphabet, there is a biological alphabet used in DNA memory. Unlike computers where the smallest unit of memory can be in one of two states, commonly referred to as a “zero” or a “one” state, biological memory can be in one of four states. For DNA the states are A,C,G or T. Each of those letters is the first letter of the name of a nucleic acid base or “nucleotide.” And just as in the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) specification for the representation of the English alphabet, there are different ways to specify “letters” or codons in the biological alphabet. According the ASCII code the letter ‘A’ can be specified by 1000001 for uppercase and 1100001 for lowercase. In the biological alphabet, for example, TTA, TTG and several other codons specify the amino acid ‘leucine.’ Of course, there is also punctuation in the biological alphabet: there are codons for ‘stop,’ analogous to a period.
What gets “spelled,” so to speak, in the coding regions of DNA memory is the assembly instructions for constructing functional protein machines. (And yes, Ray, I know it gets transcribed onto messenger RNA – mRNA – during the process, and that much, much more happens from start to finish, but what we have here is one who isn’t a molecular biologist who is only attempting to convey the fact that thoughtful engineering is sometimes required regardless of the context – even when it is a biological context. Please feel free to continue to provide links to Wikipedia pages with technical information – although the readers of First Things are intelligent and will not be bamboozled; they will realize the answers to the questions posed here are not to be found in them.)
The letters of the English alphabet can be arranged in a nearly infinite number of ways that are meaningless gibberish, and in an infinitesimally small number of ways that are meaningful – infinitesimally small relative to the number of arrangements that are gibberish. The likelihood of the biological alphabet accidentally spelling anything meaningful is similar to that of dumping out a box of Scrabble pieces and finding them arranged such that they correctly spelled out coherent text. Yet we find a splendid “novel” written in DNA. In the case of human DNA it is a story with a very amazing ending: beings that can write novels.
How did we get massive amounts of information instead of gibberish in DNA memory? How does mindlessness distinguish between gibberish and information? By definition it can’t. Mindless, lifeless, dumb matter cannot be “informed” so it possesses no knowledge much less the ability to translate it into symbols. Yet we have massive amounts of information represented symbolically in biological memory. It is not like the RNA World hypothesis has an answer for a very fundamental question: How did a symbolic representation of information get into biological memory?
The symbols that represent information are just that – a representation. The reality – the information that is symbolized – consists of abstract concepts which are immaterial. A series of letters spelling a word only represent an idea – they are not the idea itself. In the same way, a series of codons correctly arranged “spell out” the concept of a particular, useful functionality. Information is an immaterial reality. How can the strictly material be agitated, mutated or otherwise stimulated such that it produces the immaterial? In other words, how can immaterial information ever be arrived at by a strictly material evolutionary process?
Biological memory is a medium like computer memory, a CD or a piece of paper. There is nothing in these mediums that makes what is inscribed on them the inevitable result of the attributes of the medium – which is why they can be mediums. There is no point in looking at how the paper came about to find out how the message written on it got there. And there is no point in looking at how DNA memory came about to find out how the symbolic representation of information got there. The source of it is what the source of information always is and can only be – an intelligent agent. Or, as I asked previously, should scientists be reexamining the inscription on the Rosetta Stone to see if it is actually the lucky but entirely accidental product of erosion?
March 23rd, 2012 | 5:36 am
Above, I meant to say:
“In the same way, the likelihood of the biological alphabet accidentally spelling …”
Beginning the sentence with “In the same way,”
March 23rd, 2012 | 9:04 am
Sorry y’all felt such despair, BTW. I can assure you that’s not a universal experience, though.
March 23rd, 2012 | 10:20 am
harry –
When answering concrete questions, technical information is kinda vital. It’s not ‘bamboozling’ to point to actual structural considerations that bear on the questions you’re asking.
So-called ‘New Atheists’ get slammed for not addressing or reading theology. If you’re going to discuss evolution and molecular biology, then get used to me pointing out actual data about those topics.
I’ve pointed this out before, though in a discussion you took part in, not directly to you:
Lay your fingers on the side of your jaw. Now, trace along the edge up to the top of the jawbone. Wriggle your jaw a bit to find the very tip. Notice how close your fingers are to your ear canal. Inside the inner ear are three bones, the ossicles: malleus, incus, and stapes. They are carefully arranged to transfer sound energy from the eardrum to the cochlea as efficiently as possible. How could such an amazing mechanism arise? (One that’s been cited, even, as ‘irreducibly complex’ – just Google around a bit.)
It turns out that a classification of dinosaur called the therapsids had two jaw joints. The therapsids are known (by several independent lines of evidence) to be ancestral to modern mammals… and we have a basically complete fossil record of the gradual transition of one of those jaw joints into the modern bones of the inner ear. Fossils representing over 11 separate stages have been found. Note that intermediate steps were all advantageous, though not as efficient or optimized. Some transitional forms did help amplify sound energy but didn’t work while the animal was chewing. We still have problems with that under some circumstances (try to listen to someone while eating celery) but the separation is far more developed now.
How did the information on how to build that sound-transmitting-and-filtering apparatus get ‘written into’ mammalian DNA? One step at a time. Slight changes in the growth rates and timing of jaw development, by undirected mutation. Some of them were advantageous, and selected for. Some of them were just ‘not disadvantageous’, and spread by chance (genetic drift). A mutation that produces ‘gibberish’ produces an organism that doesn’t survive, especially long-term.
You take a look at the bones themselves, they tell the story. Bones fossilize well. Molecular machinery doesn’t, but in these days of whole-genome sequencing we’re getting a handle on that, too.
Ah, yes. Deja vu all over again. Like I’d never addressed your ‘Scrabble’ analogy ever before. Tell ya what, just for fun – the mark of a real debater is that you can summarize your opponent’s position in such a way that they agree they’ve been fairly represented. I’ve addressed the problems with your ‘Scrabble’ analogy at least three times before. Can you fairly summarize my response?
As I’ve asked before: Define “information”. (Make sure it’s measurable!)
March 24th, 2012 | 10:24 am
What makes you think I have to get used to it? I said, “Please feel free to continue to provide links to Wikipedia pages with technical information.”
The more I learn about molecular biology, the more convinced I become that it is a study of the work of an engineer. Richard Dawkins once remarked:
As I have explained before, I have attended many meetings regarding technical issues in my day. Sometimes an ardent advocate of a particular viewpoint attempts to “bamboozle” meeting attendees by presenting technical information to them that they have neither the time nor the inclination to make the required effort to comprehend. The ardent advocate hopes they will just assume it “proves” his point when it really doesn’t. As I pointed out before, this happening is so common that there is a Dilbert cartoon making fun of it, where Dilbert has to explain to his co-conspirators, when it backfires, “If I could lie I would be in marketing.” I made that remark because there really is no plausible explanation of how the information in biological memory got there mindlessly, notwithstanding molecular biology’s technical jargon.
Your remarks regarding jaw bones and hearing do not explain at all how mindlessness can create massive amounts of information. Mindless, lifeless matter simply can’t make use of information because it can’t be “informed,” although it can be intelligently configured such that its behavior is directed by information.
As for my mentioning the likelihood of millions of Scrabble pieces accidentally spelling out something not only coherent but definitely purposeful, which is analogous to the contents of biological memory coming about mindlessly and accidentally, and your responses to that, I will let readers decide for themselves whose explanation is plausible.
As for a definition of information: A Wikipedia page says “Information, in its most restricted technical sense, is an ordered sequence of symbols that can be interpreted as a message.” Can lifeless, mindless matter comprehend or conceive of a message? Can it translate the meaning of a message into symbols? Can it then translate the symbols back into the meaning of the message?
March 24th, 2012 | 11:27 am
Ray English wrote: “Sorry y’all felt such despair, BTW. I can assure you that’s not a universal experience, though.”
Despair is not an experience, nor is it a feeling. It is a condition. It is the condition of ultimate hopelessness about the last things.
Despair is the opposite of the Christian virtue of elpis, of the famous faith, hope, and love (pistis, elpis, and agape). (1 Cor 13:13)
Hope is not optimism or gladness, just as despair is not pessimism or sadness. Hope is an orientation of your life toward the good things which may not immediately seem to exist. Despair means you have oriented your being toward ultimate meaninglessness.
The attempt to locate one’s dignity in just-so origin tales, or to explain the ineffable astonishment of one’s existence within the formulae of experimental scientism is an elaborate psychological attempt to evade the question. For certain easily-satisfied seekers, the quantitative mythos suffices to distract them from contemplating their oblivion. And the theology that derives from never seriously grappling with one’s own oblivion is necessarily shallow.
The expressions of concealed nihilism in the commentary above are philosophical whistlings past the graveyard. We faithful are the true agnostics! We do not assume the Nihil is the highest truth, we do not take the nothingness as given and inescapable and then propound our despair. We begin our search in the most earnest “I do not know,” and proceed, quite logically, from the evidence of our minds, senses, and intuitions, such as: The most fundamental fact that there is something rather than nothing, or the sweet contemplation of one’s own consciousness, or the inexplicable goodness of self-sacrifice.
The only condition worse than despair is unconscious despair, actively chosen. Positively perverse is the idea that it isn’t a choice at all, but the necessary conclusion of science! If only we could wake these sophists from their dogmatic, epistemological slumber for a single second, the scales would fall from their eyes like Saul on the road to Damascus.
And, Harry, indeed you are right. The sunlight on Easter morning washes over everyone, believer and non-believer alike. But to be present to the full meaning of that day requires a man to wake up and see it, rather than sleeping in and brooding over ancient scientistic superstitions; or at very least, to stop spitefully closing his eyes to what the smallest child intuits in the glow of matters that “surpasseth all understanding.” (Phil 4:7)
At least they hang out on sites like these. At least they are moved to engage us. They know they are missing something, but they must stop short of admitting this deficiency while in intellectual combat lest they mar their perceived credibility. In my long experience, the (erotic) longing for meaning is not an obstacle when speaking intimately of the first things, when face-to-face, eye-to-eye, soul-to-soul — as Socrates did, as the great mystics do — though such obstacles are characteristic of public rhetoric, especially online. Yet they are actively searching, and they suspect (or even fear) we have the answer.
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” — Pagan, convert, bishop, philosopher, saint, and doctor of the church, Augustine of Hippo.
March 24th, 2012 | 12:31 pm
Hello, King,
Wow!! Please continue to add your thoughts to these discussions. The eloquence of your post makes me think I ought to just hang it up and let you carry on. (Yet I probably wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to post something else. ;o)
March 27th, 2012 | 9:44 am
harry –
William Paley, he of the “Watchmaker Argument”, said something once: “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”
The information to build the ossicles is in the DNA, true. (To be more precise, it’s in the DNA and the cellular environment in which it’s read, but we can neglect that complication.) But we can see how the revision happened by looking at the bones, which fossilized well. Each stage of the change is small – well within the range of ‘mindless’ variation – and yet, nowadays, it builds a complex structure that simply wasn’t there before.
Information is now in the DNA that wasn’t there before. Not a whole novel, true – but at least a few paragraphs. And because we can see the bones, we can see how it happened – mindlessly, but not by “dumb luck”.
That’s only one case, true. But there are others, and what’s most important is that it serves as an ‘existence proof’, showing that it can happen. Please, don’t fall into what Daniel Dennett calls “The Philosopher’s Syndrome”: “Mistaking a failure of imagination for an insight into necessity.”
You claim I’m someone who “hopes [readers] will just assume [my reference] “proves” [my] point when it really doesn’t.” You accuse me of fundamental dishonesty. Let’s see you step up and support your allegation. I have presented the ossicles as a concrete example of what you claim is impossible – ‘mindless’ processes putting functional information into DNA. Can you explain why it’s not? With more than a dismissive handwave reminiscent of a playground “Nuh uh!”?
I’m disappointed, but I’m afraid no longer surprised, that you either could not, or chose not to, try to summarize my responses to your “Scrabble” analogy. I’m afraid at this point I have to wonder if you’re even reading what I write, rather than simply responding (‘mindlessly’)?
March 27th, 2012 | 10:06 am
King – My name is Ray Ingles, not ‘English’, actually. And that’s my real name, not a nickname or pseudonym. (We do occasionally get the occasional confused Spanish telemarketer; should I call you “Rey”? :-) )
I’m actually able to conceive of a lot of good things which don’t seem to exist now, but that I’m committed to helping bring about.
What if I’ve contemplated it but haven’t reached the same conclusions you have about it? Is that imaginable?
What if I were to say harry and King are the ones who “doth protest too much”, desperately trying to convince themselves they are not mistaken by flocking to like-minded sites and trying to beat back perceived challengers?
As C.S. Lewis put it, “That is why the motive game is so uninteresting. Each side can go on playing ad nauseam, but when all the mud has been flung every man’s views still remain to be considered on their merits. I decline the motive game and resume the discussion.”
March 28th, 2012 | 12:33 am
That “proof” is on the level of the tornado driving the nail into the board “proving” tornadoes can build houses. It is another “just so” story. If I find similar but different functional parts that were created in a factory, and decide which ones, in my opinion, are small improvements over others, that says absolutely nothing about the CAD/CAM used in manufacturing the parts.
A mindless process bringing about a given result is one thing. That can be explained by the laws of physics with the addition of chance possibly being required. A mindless process configured such that it is driven by information is an entirely different thing. If the perforations in the roll of paper used to direct a player piano results in the piano playing beautiful music, that would indicate the perforations were intelligently designed. If the perforations are placed such that the piano makes clashing sounds that are definitely not music, that is another. And if the perforations are placed such that the piano won’t play at all, that is still another.
According to your thinking, one piece of music that in your opinion is “better” than another is proof that the perforations in the roll of paper were arrived at mindlessly. That is not how objective analysis works. (Analysis not warped by the irrational, blind faith required of atheistic “religious” convictions.) How was matter configured such that it became what we would call a “piano” and such that it could be directed at all, whether by information or by gibberish? Rationality demands that we conclude that a musician was involved in coming up with the information – an intelligent agent — and that a craftsman – an intelligent agent – was involved in configuring matter such that it became what we call a “player piano.” The technology of life is nearly infinitely more functionally complex than a player piano. Just like the player piano, the configuration of matter such that life – matter’s “music” – was possible at all was no accident. And like the player piano, the source of the information that drives the process was an Artist and Master Craftsman.
How does mindlessness bridge the gap between perforations in paper and beautiful music, when that gap must be filled with a player piano? And if it can’t do that, how does mindlessness bridge the gap between information and the “music” of life, when the gap is nearly infinitely larger, and massive amounts of precise information are required? Where are the lifeless “clashing sounds” that should be much more common than the music of life if life really came about mindlessly? We should be finding many instances of massive, intricate complexity that are non-functional, just like we would find many rolls of paper with perforations such that they wouldn’t make music in the player piano, and find many “not quite there yet” player pianos, if life and player piano music were mindless accidents sometimes brought about by what the laws of physics and dumb luck do mindlessly. But we don’t.
Life, like player piano music, is an exception to what rational minds can expect the laws of physics and mindless chance to bring about. And pointing out the equivalent of a tornado driving a nail into a board doesn’t make it rational to attribute to the laws of physics and dumb luck miraculous creative powers, even if boards accidentally nailed together by the last tornado were to sometimes not be separated by the next, and those boards were sometimes attached by flying nails to other boards, and more boards were attached than pulled apart during each tornado, you still wouldn’t end up with an elegant mansion. Mindlessness just can’t do that, nor can it arrive at the beautiful symphony of the music of life, much less life that can create beautiful music.
Things like that just don’t happen in the real world, where automobiles, as time goes by, become less functional instead of developing power steering they didn’t have before, where intricacy and complexity tend to get undone over time – not increase, where replication occasionally creating copying errors results in a degenerate, less functional copy of the original, not an improved one. It is not like quality of copies of mediums containing complex data, like music for example, tends to increase, as though enough copies of copies of copies of that CD produced by the grade school band will eventually result in one that sounds like the New York Philharmonic.
In the real world copying errors are just that – errors, not improvements. And if a mindless process that supposedly resulted in life started out with miraculously replicating lifeless matter, the functional complexity of the replicating units, starting out, would have consisted only in the extremely lucky ability to replicate, since the replication is supposedly what eventually brings about functional complexity. Any copying errors are then almost certainly going to result in the loss of the ability to replicate at all in the copy instead of some lucky improvement. In the real world the extremely unlikely intricacy and precision of the environment that would be required for the replication to even start wouldn’t last long enough for this problem to be overcome, because in the real world unlikely intricacy and complexity tend to fall apart until they reach their most likely state. Again, it is like explaining how the computer hardware, AND its operating system, AND the self replicating software running on it all came about accidentally. Things like that just don’t happen in the real world.
Atheists, get real.
Right. The environment had to have been intelligently designed, too.
March 28th, 2012 | 12:56 am
Oops.
Where I said
because in the real world unlikely intricacy and complexity tend to fall apart until they reach their most likely state.
I should have said:
because in the real world unlikely intricacy and complexity tend to fall apart until the matter comprising it reaches its most likely state.
March 28th, 2012 | 9:18 am
harry – 975 words in your response, and less than 3% of them actually relate to the case under discussion. (And you accuse me of bamboozling. Sheesh.) Your only pertinent words are:
That’s exactly what I said you’ve been providing all along: “a dismissive handwave reminiscent of a playground “Nuh uh!”
The ossicles are not “a nail in a board”. They are a sophisticated, finely-tuned mechanism – which is exactly what you assert undirected evolution cannot produce. And yet, we have the entire sequence of their development laid out before us in the fossil record. Each little tweak, each small developmental mutation is displayed in detail. A functional system that did not exist 300 million years ago exists now – the ‘information’ to build it wasn’t in the DNA of any living creature 300 million years ago, but is extant and widespread now.
I’m going to have to insist that you clarify your specific objections to this case. Since ‘mindless’ fiddling, by your claims, cannot produce an ‘irreducibly complex’ mechanism, cannot produce the information necessary to direct and build it, you must perforce insist that a mind was involved in the design and construction of the ossicles.
Where?
Can you point to a specific transition – Yanoconodon, say – that you’re willing to make a case for being specifically designed? Or are you asserting that the information to make ossicles isn’t in the DNA, and we’re just really lucky that all mammals happen to have them? (Some quirk of embryological development, perhaps?)
Or, mahyap, your ‘tornado, nail, board’ crack is a backhanded concession. Are you in fact admitting that ‘mindless’ evolution did come up with an elaborate, precisely-organized mechanism in this case, but claiming that it never happened anywhere else? It only happens to things that fossilize well, it only happens where we can (presently) look for it, nowhere else?
Let’s be clear: I don’t want to hear about player pianos. I don’t want to hear about CD-ROMs. I don’t want to hear about tornadoes and nails and lumber. I want to hear about ossicles. The bones of the mammalian inner ear. That’s what I’m asking about.
March 28th, 2012 | 2:02 pm
The bones of the mammalian inner ear, however they came about, did so long after lifeless matter supposedly, mindlessly and accidentally assembled itself into a reproducing life form. That first life form came about, according to you, by lifeless replication of units of matter of some kind “evolving” into life. You haven’t explained how the significant functional complexity required for self replication in those units of matter got there. By dumb luck, we must assume. The significant functional complexity needed to self replicate that came about by dumb luck must have been the only functional complexity in those units, since you maintain that replication is what brings about significant functional complexity, and at this point replication is just getting started.
That being the case, copying errors almost certainly will only cause the loss of the ability to replicate in the defective copy. That presents terrible problems in terms of our replicating units eventually “evolving” into life. One of them is that the extremely unlikely environment that would allow for the creation of lifeless units of matter that can self replicate would tend to disintegrate, as all our experience tells us that highly unlikely configurations of matter tend towards a more probable configuration – unlikely integration tends to disintegrate into a more likely configuration of matter. Our universal experience tells us that this is so. Things fall apart, not self-assemble.
This makes the lucky, accidental self replication AND and the maintenance of an environment that would sustain that replication till it got past the problem of defective copies failing to replicate – which would be a miracle in itself – miraculously lucky. Since you are so anxious to promote belief in the miraculous, why don’t you just admit that the supernatural was required in all of this?
You have still have much to explain before you can offer the bones of the mammalian inner ear as proof for anything. We now know they come about by information driving a process. How that information got there needs to be explained. How did the gap between the information and the end result get filled in with a process that could be directed by the information? How did a process directed by information itself evolve without intelligent information being in place first? How did the information evolve without a process to which it could correspond? Wait. I know. Don’t tell me: Dumb luck.
Why don’t you just admit that currently, the best explanation – the only rational explanation – is the involvement of an intelligent agent?
Intelligent is a reality. All who aren’t deficient in it realize this. As a reality, it is entirely legitimate to consider it as a causal factor in a given phenomenon coming about. Try to grasp this concept: Acknowledging that intelligence is a reality and therefore can be legitimately considered as a causal factor in a given phenomenon coming about is not “against the rules” of truly religion-neutral, objective science.
It is only against the rules for science perverted by religious atheism. Real science will simply state, when it is the case, that currently the best explanation for a given phenomenon is the involvement of an intelligent agent. It doesn’t claim that intelligence was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Such claims are outside the domain of science’s competence. You can believe the intelligence was an alien from another galaxy if you want to do so. That is fine. But please be scientific about this. If science is to remain science it must remain objective, neutral and before all else, rational.
March 28th, 2012 | 5:37 pm
harry –
Stop right there. We know how they came about. Through the mindless combination of chance mutations and natural selection.
You don’t get to use weasel words. If you doubt that the information to build ossicles got into mammalian DNA by mindless processes, explain why. And with specifics, not with “the involvement of an intelligent agent”. If that’s your claim, specify where and how. Which links in the chain between therapsids and bats were the result of intelligent intervention, and how do you know that?
You can’t claim that ‘agency’ is the only imaginable explanation. No begging the question. That’s exactly the principle that the case of the ossicles challenges.
Note that I didn’t ask about the “first life form”. That’s not the case under discussion. The case under discussion is the origin of the functional information in DNA that specifies the development of the ossicles.
If you can’t answer my question, just say so, don’t talk around it.
March 28th, 2012 | 6:53 pm
That is the problem. You know how it all happened, yet you won’t address the issues I have mentioned. You shift the discussion away from the central question, which is “How did mindless, lifeless matter ever assemble itself into a single-celled reproducing life form comprised of information driven nanotechnology light years beyond our own?” to a discussion of the bones of mammalian inner ear, which really has nothing to do with that – except that that discussion serves as a distraction.
You have probably seen the cartoon where the scientist is explaining to his colleague the intricate, extensive formula he has drawn on a white board, and in the middle of it is a cloud labeled, “Then a miracle occurs” and the formula continues on from there. His colleague, pointing at the cloud, remarks, “I think you should be more explicit here in step two.” Well, move the cloud over to the far left and label it “abiogenesis.” I think you should be more explicit there in step one. There is just no plausible explanation as to how life got started mindlessly. Don’t shift the discussion over to the right and talk about the bones of the mammalian inner ear. We haven’t got there yet. We need to get past step one.
March 29th, 2012 | 9:30 am
harry –
Nope. The central question is – note these are your words, here – “examples of significant functional complexity that we know came about mindlessly and accidentally.” That’s why I’m harping on the ossicles.
You want an explanation in terms of – your words, again – “causes now in operation”. So, the first thing I must establish is that it’s possible for “significant functional complexity” to come about “mindlessly and accidentally” at all. The ossicles are a pretty much unimpeachable example of just that. (Certainly you haven’t made any attempt whatsoever to actually impeach them, I’ll note.)
Once we have that sorted out, we can more fruitfully talk about what may or may not be a “plausible” explanation for how life got started. Maybe you’re misreading the blackboard and it doesn’t say “then a miracle occurs” after all. But we need to establish the principle first; there’s no point in tackling anything else until that’s sorted out.
So, where’s the intelligent intervention that brought about the ossicles and the information necessary to develop them?
March 29th, 2012 | 2:00 pm
Hi, Ray,
You are using something that is already a part of life as your example of significant functional complexity that came about mindlessly and accidentally. The fact that there is somewhat of a fossil record of ossicle development doesn’t change that fact.
The point is that OUTSIDE of life itself we don’t find the laws of physics and mindless chance coming up with significant functional complexity.
I have repeatedly claimed that life is an exception to what can reasonably be expected of the laws of physics and dumb luck to come up with mindlessly. It is silly for you use an example from life itself to disprove that, and very selectively citing my remarks doesn’t hide that silliness at all.
March 29th, 2012 | 3:27 pm
harry – We may actually be getting somewhere. Maybe. Leaving aside the “already part of life” or “OUTSIDE life” bit, let me ask you a question.
Do you agree that the development of the ossicles is an “example of significant functional complexity that came about mindlessly and accidentally”?
I’m looking for a “Yes” or “No” answer. (I’m also fine with an answer of the form “Yes, but…” or “No, but…”; I definitely need a straight answer to this question, though. Can you provide one?)
March 29th, 2012 | 9:28 pm
Why would you include “mindlessly and accidentally” in your question? Obviously, my answer to it is “No,” since I just said, “I have repeatedly claimed that life is an exception to what can reasonably be expected of the laws of physics and dumb luck to come up with mindlessly,” and, “It is silly for you use an example from life itself to disprove that.”
And life is not just an exception – it is a spectacular exception. Nothing else the laws of physics and dumb luck has mindlessly produced comes anywhere near it. The technology created by the best minds of modern science doesn’t come anywhere near it. Before its discovery, we all agreed modern science had built things far beyond what the laws of physics and dumb luck could ever produce. Everybody knew there was no way mindlessness could produce anything as functionally complex as what was coming out of our modern factories.
Then we discovered the nanotechnology of life. It was far more complex than any factory of ours. It made ours look primitive. It was entirely automated. It was able to manufacture, among other things, more factories. And it wasn’t just technology – it was nanotechnology. So, when we find the most astounding example of all of what the laws of physics and dumb luck could never mindlessly and accidentally bring about, many refuse to admit that is what it is. Could this be worst instance of all time of the NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome? Is that what it is? “If it’s better than what we can do then nobody did it.” Is that it?
Well, I can imagine the pride that must come with thinking one is well along the way to mastering the Universe, accomplishing things far, far superior to what inferior creatures of the past were silly to be so proud of, trivialities like figuring out how to build and use a fire and invent the wheel. And it’s not that I enjoy bruising egos, but it is evident to rational, objective (and humble?) minds that someone way, way smarter than us built the nanotechnology of life. Someone whose work makes us look like inferior creatures who were silly to be so proud of what we had accomplished.
March 30th, 2012 | 10:48 am
harry – Life is exceptional in lots of ways. But most life is in fact mindless, and none of life is immune to accidents. And that’s why – for now – I’m talking about the ossicles, not life in general. (And at this point, I have to conclude that’s why you’re talking about anything but the ossicles.)
Still and all, we’re finally making progress! Now, we have over two dozen fossils covering the transition from therapsids to mammals. We can see the jawbones evolving into inner-ear bones. If this did not happen ‘mindlessly’ or ‘accidentally’ – which is what you’re very specifically claiming – it must perforce have happened due to intelligence and design, right?
So, you must be able to identify and specify where the intelligence was applied, and how, right? Surely you’ve got something more than what Dawkins called the “Argument From Personal Incredulity”, right? (“I don’t understand how this could happen, therefore it didn’t.”)
Did “an intelligent agent” cause specific mutations to arise in a particular sequence, for example? Or did “an intelligent agent” operate more on the level of selective breeding? Did “an intelligent agent” do this continuously, or were there specific points you identify as particular ‘intelligent interventions’? Let’s hear your hypothesis, and the evidence supporting it in this specific case.
I mean, you’re not assuming what you’re setting out to prove, right? You’re not saying, “I don’t understand how a mindless process interacting with random factors could produce an instance of ‘significant functional complexity’, therefore it didn’t”, right?
March 30th, 2012 | 2:04 pm
Hi, Ray,
If you are convinced that mindless, lifeless, dumb matter has more talent and creativity than yourself and science’s best minds, I don’t think I can help you.
As for the manner of the involvement of the unseen intelligent agent, science and theism would view it differently.
Science would deduce the existence of a reality that could not be directly observed, by its effects, similar to the way it acknowledges the reality of gravity, which cannot be directly observed, by its effects. And since the effects of this reality are those that can only be brought about by an intelligent agent, they would further deduce that this unobserved reality possessed an intellect. (You may be wondering, if this unseen reality was God, why doesn’t He just show Himself to us? Well if that is the case (and I am convinced it is), He did. He became a man and walked among us. We killed Him. He, of course, since He could only be killed in His humanity, raised His humanity from the dead and ascended into Heaven whence He came.)
Theism would take into consideration the discoveries of science. It would ponder over whether life coming about was built-in such that the “seeds” of life were there from the very beginning, its eventual arrival being inevitable, or whether there were further interventions of creativity on the part of God after an initial creative act, Who would in that case still bring about an effect that indicated that an unobservable, intelligent reality had been at work.
If life was, in some respects, the eventual and inevitable result of what was designed into an initial creative act on the part of God, then rational science that acknowledges intelligence as a causal factor in phenomena coming about when that is the only conclusion it can reach and remain rational science – unlike contemporary biology that wastes its time with an irrational pursuit sillier than attempting to figure out how a computer, and its operating system, and the power company providing electricity to the computer, and the replicating software running on the computer all came about mindlessly and accidentally – then that rational, true science will have much to learn and then explain to the world about how the initial act of creation was designed such that it contained the seed of what would inevitably become life, and how it developed along the way there.
Humanity is the most fabulous music of all God plays with mindless matter as His instrument like humans play a violin. As I pointed out early on in this discussion, the Catholic belief, if I may put it this way, is that God, from the beginning, always was and still is playing His violin, an instrument He, of course, crafted with amazing precision so we would recognize that – and Him.
March 30th, 2012 | 6:46 pm
Ray Ingles wrote: “What if I’ve contemplated it but haven’t reached the same conclusions you have about it? Is that imaginable?”
Frankly, no it is not imaginable. It is rather an indication that you have not contemplated the subject properly or as deeply as you think you have.
I have not followed your argument closely. I’ll leave that to Harry who has begun with the proper premises and therefore will not as easily be led to the typical absurdities one inevitably mistakes for “conclusions,” conclusions which you have repeated.
The evidence for God is itself. We take as a given that Something exists so that do not spend our lives spinning around in the cul-de-sacs of existentialism. How’s that for “reasonable”? Scientism posits that at the bottom of mystery is still more mystery. They construct their faith around the infinitely regressing question mark rather than the exclamation point we all understand a priori whenever we humble our intellect and contemplate the world as a child might: I exist!
Subjecting certain fundaments (one’s existence, consciousness and conscience, God’s dominion) to the rigors of inquiry as if they were dung beetles destroys the very instruments of inquiry upon which your faith depends.
Your diversion about “motives” begs some question we are not interested in. I do not care what does or does not motivate you. All I care about is the promulgation of your erroneous conclusions.
It appears, however, that you are taken with what motivates discussions like these, which is why the question even occurred to you, and which is why you seek cover behind a great Christian apologist to explain something none of us asked you about. This alone tells us how unfamiliar you are with what drives you to engage the commentary on this site. None of us asked you to reveal your motives: people who obsess over behaviorism are likely to be overly taken with others’ ascribing motives to them, rather than engaging the contention at the heart of our discussion.
In other words, you are a recognizable type. The burden of proof is on you to explain otherwise, especially in a forum where you seek to challenge the entry-level assumptions of that forum.
Maybe despair motivates you. Maybe despair doesn’t motivate you. Doesn’t matter. My point was, yours is a faith of despair, and it takes a superhuman effort to escape the consequences of indirectly promulgating nihilism, particularly when you mistake that nihilism for knowledge, a knowledge to which only deep-thinking, arcane interpreters of celestial quanta have access.
The truth is as plain as your heartbeat, which didn’t have to exist, but does. The truth is plain enough to cause an infant to cry out in joy. But alas, it is a truth intellectuals mark as regressive: We have transcended the truths we knew as an infant, have we not? To go back is to become stupider! Human knowledge, the hard-won wisdom that comes with maturity, is too valuable to risk in a journey back to our infancy! Now that we know so much more, who would ever go back to a childhood understanding of things?
So, because this irreducible joie de vivre is emblematic of immaturity, we train ourselves to scowl instead at its mention, to ridicule as simpletons those who are still connected to the source of life. And we take the scowl and the scoff as the marks of our maturity! Or as the signs of intellectual superiority, refinement, education.
That is real despair. That is the gnarled ugliness of the elderly reinvested in the mythos of their lives, absent which their identities would disappear. There is nothing sadder than to witness the terminally hardened hearts of old men.
Am I describing you? Not so fast, Mr. Motive: not necessarily, the jury is still out, and not all worshipers at the altar of scientism must succumb to the despair of their asserted commandments. The condition of your heart is between you and your god. Your god is officially uninterested in you. Mine is not, and that makes all the difference to what kind of man I am.
April 2nd, 2012 | 8:21 am
harry –
That’s wrong in so many ways it’s difficult to know where to begin. Lifeless matter didn’t develop things like the ossicles – which you still refuse to address – so that’s a non-starter, for example. Some of “science’s best minds” have developed systems of self-catalyzing RNA, and are continuing to study them and improve our models. And, finally, even a little creativity might be expected to do remarkable things, given 3.5 billion years to work with.
It’s the last bit that seems to be the key issue here. That’s why I’m trying to get you to actually address the case I’ve presented – the ossicles. Their development sure seems to establish that ‘mindless’ processes are able to display some degree of ‘creativity’.
Maybe we can start with putting things in your terms: Were the ossicles a “further intervention” or not? Can you answer that ‘yes or no’ question?
April 2nd, 2012 | 8:48 am
King –
Y’know, it’s funny how often atheists are painted as insisting, “If you don’t agree with me, then obviously you must be wrong.” In practice, though, I gotta say the theists seem to do that better than anyone. :)
And yet your whole post is about sitting in judgment on my motives, without even a tiny bit of theological philosophical argumentation. Odd, that.
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