God3’s Blog

As a response to the problem of a universe that looks increasing fine tuned for life (see here ), the multi verse (many universe’s) theory has been brought forward to answer the teleologists claim of apparent design.

Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of our universe’s current low entropy condition being obtained by chance alone, are on the order of 1:1010 -I wouldn’t bet my worldview on those odds, but many people are willing to; in order to escape the teleological implications of a fine tuned universe just right for intelligent life.

Even if we have a multi verse situation, the chances of us being able to observe our universe are infinitesimally small -leading to the inference that this theory is a case of the cart leading the horse, -that is the metaphysical presuppositions of the theory maker demand another theory other than the accepted one,based , not on evidence but on a priori prejudice.

I found this interesting quote by Physicist Brian Greene on Peter Williams excellent blog ‘ID.plus‘:

‘If true, the idea of a multiverse would be a Copernican Revolution realized on a cosmic scale. It would be a rich and astounding upheaval, but one with potentially hazardous consequences. Beyond the inherent difficulty in assessing its validity, when should we allow the multiverse framework to be invoked in lieu of a more traditional scientific explanation? Had this idea surfaced a hundred years ago, might researchers have chalked up various mysteries to how things just happen to be in our corner of the multiverse and not pressed on to discover all the wondrous science of the last century? …The danger, if the multiverse idea takes root, is that researchers may too quickly give up the search for underlying explanations. When faced with seemingly inexplicable observations, researchers may invoke the framework of the multiverse prematurely – proclaiming some phenomenon or other to merely reflect conditions in our own bubble universe and thereby failing to discover the deeper understanding that awaits us. ‘

William Lane Craig says:

‘if our universe is but one member of a multiverse, then we ought to be observing highly extraordinary events, like horses’ popping into and out of existence by random collisions, or perpetual motion machines, since these are vastly more probable than all of nature’s constants and quantities’ falling by chance into the virtually infinitesimal life-permitting range.’

Using my new Nano iPod (thank you Santa) I was listening to the podcast of Intelligent design the future –get yours here.

In the current podcast Dr Ralph Seelke is interviewed, he is involved in experimental evolution and has been looking at the capabilities and limitations of evolution.Currently he is looking at genetic changes in a population of bacteria over many generations, currently at 2000 generations and climbing- check out the podcast for more details.

He has an interesting brief definition of micro and macro evolution; Microevolution he defines as having the characteristic of having been observed; where as Macroevolution has never been seen –but is inferred from the fossil record etc.

The inferred bridge between Micro and Macro evolution is  stepwise beneficial  change, the problem comes  when many things need to change all at the same time, much like Behe’s edge of evolution argument.

Dr Seelke  looks  at what evolution can do –the point I find interesting  is that so few scientist have asked and designed experiments that tackle the question of what evolution can and cannot do –it is just assumed that’s the issue is settled.Dr Seelke:‘There hasn’t been an intense effort by scientist to find the limits of evolution in the evolutionary community; because they are convinced it is true.’ There are different levels of certainty within science, some phenomena, for instance are singularities and so cannot be observed and as such remain as inferences only, whereas other phenomena can be observed again and again and so the relationship between cause and effect is more certain.  

The bridge between the observed microevolution and the unobserved macroevolution looks to be flimsy and may need some empirical  shoring up if it is to manage the weight of one species turning into another using microevolution over many generations.For instance at some point some changes are required that are major –can a cell go from a single celled fully functioning organism to a multi-celled single organism in stepwise fashion? That is in one step?

With the advent of multicellular organisms comes the question of the origin of distinctive cellular function, multicelled organism have cells that are distinctive in function if not in form, the origin of intra cellular communication to name a few challenges to a exclusively stepwise walk across the bridge from micro to macro evolution.    

Bradford over at Telic thoughts wields the hammer and hits the nails squarely on the head:

He says :

‘He mentioned how struck he was by the reaction of biologists to the genetic code. They (and others) act as if this were an ordinary biological feature. It is far from it. The Big Bang and quantum physics get the attention of philosophers while the genetic code flies under philosophical radar. A symbolic molecular coding system is presumed to be a consequence of unobserved chemical reactions. But why? Because we find parallel results in chemistry? No, that’s not it. There are vague references to complexity arising. But the type of complexity cited (crystals for example) is of a different nature. All of this leads me to believe a philosophical predilection underlies which lens we choose to view data through. If the lens orients one to a telic perspective it is not likely to see the light of day.

When Darwinians challenge IDers to come up with some empirical results that strikes me as a strange demand. The empirical data is being churned out every day in labs all across the world.

Excellent point. Data is neutral with respect to where it comes from. Whether researchers believe in ID or oppose it the data remains the same.’

I am in complete agreement with the above statement,the data is there -there are no exclusively naturalistic empirical driven scenarios for how we got to the complexity of structure and function including the systems we see in place for maintaining fidelity of the message; that we find in the genome. Just as there are no exclusively naturalistic empirically driven scenarios for the cause of Hoyle’s distasteful ‘Big bang’ , that is why the field is wide open for interpretation.

History teaches that a consensus is not to be trusted, another bus will be along shortly. I read again and again that Intelligent design is dead ,yet not one piece of evidence is brought to the table to demonstrate its demise,while the big elephant in the room everyone is ignoring remains to be explained,where did this complexity and diversity we have recently and unexpectedly uncovered originate ?

Is it naive to expect the data to always lead and our ideas to meekly follow ?Are we unsullied by metaphysics and so free to see the data as it is ? The big invisible elephant suggests otherwise.

(late night ramblings)

Imagine a barren landscape where nothing grows ,a salt lake, Mare Tranquillitatis,a rock orbiting a neutron star bombarded with radiation or my back garden after the dog has been out there.

Life’s origin, it seems, is a singularity,its ubiquity is not apparent, but not shown to be false.

Science assumes a closed universe,the method both dictates that assumption, and is limited to making only that assumption. A case of the media dictating the message ?

In which case the instigation of life on our barren rock, quite possibly a singular event, was non teleological and could only be the product of chance or contingency.

Imagine that salt lake, mare tranquillitatis or the rock orbiting a neutron star, on that sterile barren landscape imagine atoms in chaos finding there thermodynamic equilibrium, from this imagine some means of self assembly of these atoms into complex machines that are characterised by having not just one initial function, but many, all critical to survival and necessary from the outset.

The commonest of these functions our newly assembled machines have, is to be able to reproduce other self assembling machines. Spontaneous generation by chance or by contingency?

If these are the only options we have, then a problem arises, if life is written into the make up of every atom and into natural law, then where are the Klingon’s ?

The Chance of life’s self assembly, our other option, is widely considered to be so small as to off the scale for anyone to seriously consider.

So what are we left with? Well I guess we can but imagine.

Its my Birthday…to celebrate heres a clip of Dawkins appently lost for words:

Although the question I think, could of been framed better -I have yet to come upon clear cut examples of new information arriving in the genome leading to an increase in function-without the accompanying loss of function elsewhere,my witness Bacterial antibiotic resistance

The question is:

“Can you give an example of a genetic mutation or an evolutionary process which can be seen to increase the information in the geneome?

Some other guy things the best  answer of an example of increased information is  Downs syndrome, because Chromosome 21 is repeated ,and yes hes right ,but what I think the question was on about was new information  leading to new function.

I’m reading ‘rollback’ by Robert Sawyer, a sci-fi writer,of whom I cannot recommend enough.

Along with Clarke and Scott Card ,Sawyer has the knack of making the reader think, while simultaneously providing a world to inhabit.

I read this passage in Rollback (page 172):’”…Well, I,m an evolutionist-you know that-but I don’t agree with the testimony that the scientists on the evolution side keep giving. They keep saying that science cannot admit supernatural causes, by which they mean that any scientific explanation has to, by definition, be limited to causes intrinsic to this universe.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Everything is wrong with it” she said. “That definition of science prevents us from ever concluding that we are the product of the work of other scientists, working in a reality above this one. It leaves us with the cockeyed mess of having a scientific worldview that on one hand freely acknowledges that we will eventually be able to stimulate reality perfectly, or maybe even be able to create daughter universes, but on the other hand is constrained against ever allowing ourselves that we ourselves might exist in one of those things.”…”Technology gives species the power to prevent life, to create life , to take life on scales small and large; technology ultimately gives the power to be what we call Gods, and, even if our definition of science is blind to it, it raises the possibility that what we are is the result of the work of some other being that would, by virtue of having created us, also deserve that term God.”This a pertinent question,as we become more technologically advanced ,it is not inconceivable that we will be in a situation to create entities that are correctly described as intelligently designed.

For instance Craig Venter has been in the news recently ,trying to get a patent on synthetic life dubbed ‘designer microbes’ his group are working on, designed to produce biofuels, see here.

I remember Schaeffer saying something like; our morality cannot keep pace with our technology,likewise the results of our methodology it seems cannot be consistent with the philosophy that under girds it, that of methodological naturalism.

If we can accept Craig Venter as creator in principle; what then stops us accepting our own existence as attributable to design by another designer?

Yes, we can see Venter, but we can also perceive design, as Dawkins apparently admits, in nature .

Defined in Wiki as:

“the adoption or assumption of philosophical naturalism within scientific method with or without fully accepting or believing it … science is not metaphysical and does not depend on the ultimate truth of any metaphysics for its success (although science does have metaphysical implications), but methodological naturalism must be adopted as a strategy or working hypothesis for science to succeed. We may therefore be agnostic about the ultimate truth of naturalism, but must nevertheless adopt it and investigate nature as if nature is all that there is.”The assumption of methodological naturalism ,is itself without foundation, as far as I can see.

There is the notion that admitting non naturalistic causes and effects will be disastrous and a show stopper for science, but considering that the origin of science was due in part to a Christian consensus, it seems this show stopper is little more than spin.

Although I’d rather be quoting a British Prime minster, such as Churchill,who knew the price and experienced the isolation of standing against the consensus at time when it really mattered;remembering his warnings against appeasement of the British towards Nazi Germany,

I am however going to quote Robert F.Kennedy:

‘Few man are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues,the wrath of their society.

Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.’

With these quotes im thinking of people like Guillermo Gonzalez who has given precious few reasons for his university to deny him tenure,except one …his association with Intelligent Design Theory.

(For more details go here)

The Author Michael Crichton regarding consensus science:

“It is an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.”

This attitude is most easily seen in the peer review process, Mitchell J. Feigenbaum (inventor of chaos theory) writes of his experience which is not an uncommon occurrence, he says:

‘Both papers were rejected, the first after a half-year delay. By then, in 1977, over a thousand copies of the first preprint had been shipped. This has been my full experience. Papers on established subjects are immediately accepted. Every novel paper of mine, without exception has been rejected by the refereeing process. The reader can easily gather that I regard this entire process as a false guardian and wastefully dishonest.’

Peer review is used increasingly as a gatekeeper, rather than the role of scrutinising papers for quality assurance in terms of honesty and accuracy, it has been, and can be used to maintain the status quo; as such it is acting as a show stopper that maintains the consensus at the expense of research and development. Intelligent design is one such area where papers in support of the theory are seldom seen in front line journals, or in fact any journals as they lie outside of the consensus.

“When any human thought can be discredited by branding it unscientific, inordinate power has passed over to science; hence science itself has become in its turn the greatest source of error”

M.Polanyi

The notion that at some point in history we stepped over in science from being an external observer of phenomena, to being part of the machine and so to being observed; leads to the question of how can we, who are surrounded and subject to forces and matter observe phenomena with objectivity? How can we who are now objects floating on the Brownian motion of subjectivity be as if we are external to the machine we study, objective and detached such that we can do science that’s truly objective?

Without an external standard who can tell what objectivity is? Who can tell when we are being objective and when are we being subjective? Without a straight line who can tell if another line is curved or not?

Are they mutually exclusive or can we be in both states at the same time? Of course we cannot be both subjective and objective in the same moment about the same thing–so how do we know when the subjective self is switched off and the led light dims, while the objective led glows bright? How can Science which is beginning to become disillusioned with its headlong rush to increasing reductionism, know when objectivity is being maintained? What warrant is there for sciences claim of exclusive objectivity in data collection and handling? If there is a weak warrant then human thought that is unscientific is as much an arbiter of truth.

I mention reductionism the notion that nothing is what it seems; everything can be reduced to its parts –because this is the force behind much of science, especially molecular biology. If we accept reductionism, then we must reject any phenomena that cannot be explained accept through reductionism. Subjectivity becomes one of several illusions which include the idea of self, personality and the appearance of design.

So much for subjectivity, we can be objective 24/7 according to reductionism, except for genetic and social determinism we are fully objective… full steam ahead science!

Not only is there the problem of determinism but reductionism takes no account of imagination. Much of current science would not exist if imagination and supposals (C.S.Lewis’s word) had not been brought to bear on problems. My favourite and the best known example of the part imagination has played in Science, is the discovery of the shape of the benzene ring by August Kekule ( the gent pictured above):

“I was sitting writing on my textbook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes…My mental eye, rendered more acute by the repeated visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation; long rows sometimes more closely fitted together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke…”

Michael Ruse understands the problem with being wedded exclusively to reductionism:

‘Why should a bunch of atoms have thinking ability? Why should I, even as I write now, be able to reflect on what I am doing and why should you, even as you read now, be able to ponder my points, agreeing or disagreeing, with pleasure or pain, deciding to refute me or deciding that I am not worth the effort? No one, certainly not the Darwinian as such, seems to have any answer to this …The point is that there is no scientific answer.’

Reductionism does not give the whole answer we are more than the sum of our parts.

  “There is mystery in the universe, beguiling mystery, but it isn’t capricious, whimsical, and frivolous in its changeability. The universe is an orderly place and, at a deep level, regions of it behave like other regions, times behave like other times.There is an appetite for wonder, and isn’t true science well qualified to feed it?” 

“The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living it is finite.” 

I’m convinced that we are hard wired to worship. Every Human being is compelled to worship, In fact the compulsion to worship is; among other traits, a defining characteristic of humanity. Apes, Dolphins, cows and amoeba do not worship, as far as we can tell. 

The two quotes above are from Dawkins, who exclusively mentions an ‘appetite for wonder’ but doesn’t explain why that appetite exists, what it provides –what competitive advantage did the ancient appetite for wonder provide those who initially mutated a sense of wonder, why does it persist?

You do not need to ascribe to a particular belief involving non-materialistic causalities in order to worship, even professional atheists such as Dawkins et al worship.Worship is ubiquitous, defines everything we do at any time of day, it is not just about religious expression, it colors everything. Worship involves giving devotion to, ascribing qualities of worth to, giving reverence to, admiring, giving esteem to a subject.

G.K.Chesterton:

When we “cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything”

Richard Dawkins recognizes the appetite for wonder that we all have, nature it seems beguiles us and fills us with a sense of wonder, we worship it when we adore and reverence it.

The new atheists such as Harris, Dennett and Dawkins are busy replacing the very thing they despise; the New Scientist clarifies in this piece regarding a recent meeting:

‘It had all the fervor of a revivalist meeting. True, there were no hallelujahs, gospel songs or swooning, but there was plenty of preaching, mostly to the converted and much spontaneous applause for exhortations to follow the path of righteousness. And right there at the forefront of everyone’s thoughts was God Yet this was no religious gathering - quite the opposite. Some of the leading practitioners of modern science, many of them vocal atheists, were gathered last week in La Jolla, California, for a symposium entitled “Beyond belief: Science, religion, reason and survival” hosted by the Science Network, a science-promoting coalition of scientists and media professionals convening at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.’

Along with a sense of wonder and a need to collective worship, is the compulsion to personalize, Charles Darwin wrote of natural selection:
‘It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation. Even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever opportunity offers. As the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life’

It’s as if Natural selection were some type of person working covertly on our behalf.We all worship, what is distinctive is the object of that worship.

Richard Keyes in his chapter ‘The Idol Maker’ from the excellent book ‘No God but God’ considers that the human condition tends towards two basic idols, always working in pairs; they are characterized by the need for control and the need for trust. Neo Darwinian Evolution provides an over arching narrative through exclusively methodical naturalism that worshipers trust .Neo Darwinian Evolution also provides a means of autonomy and control through unbridled manipulation of genetic material, unbridled in the sense that ultimately what is there to stop us except our technology ? 

The trouble with this worship is, frankly, that it is blinkered, the final end of the atheist who enjoys Dawkins ‘awed wonder of the highest experience’, the poetry of nature is a little more disturbing,The last word goes to Bertrand Russell:

‘That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving: that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms: that no fire , no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling , can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction…that the whole temple of mans achievements’ must inevitably be buried – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built’.