Another Look
by BradfordMonton on God-of-the-gaps Arguments focuses our attention on a popular anti-IDist slogan; the familiar God in the gaps characterization. Those using the slogan believe that the failure of the mainstream scientific community to produce empirical data supporting mainstream theories is attributable merely to a lack of knowledge which when eventually acquired will establish said theories. Often the theories in question are focused on the origin of life and for the purpose of this blog entry that will be the primary consideration.
In the comment section this remark appears:
There are theories that have withstood the test of time. Newtonian mechanics has been a valid theory for more than 300 years. Geometrical optics has been around even longer.
This is a good time to examine well supported scientific theories and take notice of a rarely mentioned feature of them which contrasts with origin of life ideas. Newton's first law of motion states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. I wish to emphasize that the subject matter to which the law refers- objects, motion, direction, speed and force- were all commonly observed phenomenon prior to Newton's formulation. People observed objects in motion, noted their speed and direction and were familiar with the concept of force and variations in its strength. Ascribing to the foregoing descriptive and predictable behavioral norms adds to our depth of understanding about that which we already had observed and whose existence was a foregone conclusion.
The same can be said about Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Celestial bodies were known to exist. Motion was inferred by changes over time in their positional relationships with each other. When Kepler analyzed the paths of planets he was focused on an observed phenomeon. By describing the paths as elliptical Kepler was specifying more precisely the nature of a given: planetary motion.
There are a plethora of examples available and all have the same common denominator- formulating specific information about known physical phenomenon as a result of the insight of a great scientist. The operative phrase is known physical phenomenon. Theists and non-theists alike presume that if something is observed in the physical world it can yield to explanations based on empirically generated data.
Contrary to the stereotying prevalent among theistic critics theists do not look at a hitherto unobserved cosmic phenomenon and think angels must be responsible. That type of nonsense has little relevance to anything other than hoped for atta boys from fellow mockers and scoffers.
Biology has a number of subdivisions correlating to known and observed physical phenomeon. Genetics informs us about inherited traits, cellular biology about the functions of cells, molecular biology about pathways, enzymes etc. We know reproduction occurs and know that cells exist. That studies shed light on these things is not surprising to anyone. Progress in these fields has been great. Gaps steadily filled. Again, no surprise.
Contrast these disciplines with origin of life studies. Despite the claims and the hype, research has yielded little in the way of identifying viable pathways to life. But while we saw objects in motion and noted the existence of cells, living organisms and much more, we have never observed life emerging from a lifeless environment. To hurl God in the gaps charges under these circumstances is to arrogantly presume that one's preconceptions about a process must be right. OOL is not a matter of fleshing out the details of what we can see or touch. It is based on that which we never see and touch. That adds a unique metaphysical component to the gap charge that is not applicable to Newton's or Kepler's laws. Monton's points merit another look.
September 5th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Bradford,
Thank you for sharing your perspective on the development of successful scientific theories. I agree with some parts of your thesis:
True, science cannot develop in a vacuum. Scientific theories must be falsifiable and so empirical testing is a must.
However, this is just plain wrong:
All I need to do is point you to the atomic theory. As the Wikipedia article notes,
The atomic theory got lots of things right even though atoms could not be studied directly. By the end of the 19th century scientists were quite certain that the atoms existed and even classified them in a periodic table! Direct observation of atoms was only made possible in the 20th century.
Likewise, the fact that we weren't present at life's origin should not deter us from studying it.
I think this post of yours is a great illustration of what ID is: a science stopper.
Comment by olegt — September 5, 2009 @ 9:23 am
September 5th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Olegt:
Nothing is going to stop science. That's a hobgoblin scare tactic. The fact that I and others are extremely skeptical of OOL does not mean that others are not enthusiastic about it and eager to prove us wrong. Science certainly does not have to study what can be seen and touched but on the other hand if what is "studied" is an imagined process that did not occur then empirical data generated through testing will never document an actual process.
Newton and Kepler knew they were engaged in understanding real objects and real events. When you throw gap charges around the question really is who is doing the gapping and what is being placed into gaps?
Comment by Bradford — September 5, 2009 @ 9:37 am
September 5th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Bradford wrote:
Bradford, atoms had remained a figment of imagination for centuries. They turned out to be real, didn't they?
So did Dalton.
It's you who is saying that there are gaps that cannot be filled, Bradford.
Comment by olegt — September 5, 2009 @ 9:53 am
September 5th, 2009 at 10:55 am
They turned out to be empirically real only after the supporting data was generated. Most figments of the imagination remain figments.
When you throw gap charges around the question really is who is doing the gapping and what is being placed into gaps?
Not exactly. What I'm saying is that only after the gaps are filled do you have a scientific argument against design. Until then your metaphysics is as valid as mine but no more so.
Comment by Bradford — September 5, 2009 @ 10:55 am
September 5th, 2009 at 11:18 am
One scientific argument against design is that there is no scientific argument for design.
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2009 @ 11:18 am
September 5th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Yes, Bradford, most new theories fail, just like most new businesses fail. Phlogiston turned out to be nothing but a figment of imagination. So did the luminiferous aether. That does not meant all new theories fail.
The example of the atomic theory shows quite unequivocally that science can fruitfully study not only those physical objects that can be easily examined (motion of physical bodies) but also things whose existence is not at all obvious. And atoms are but one example, Bradford. Classical electrodynamics introduced even more ephemeral objects—fields. Max Planck reluctantly postulated the existence of energy quanta even though no one had observed one by that time. No one has seen a quark—they don't exist in isolation—but the of quantum chromodynamics theory based on them works pretty well.
Yes, origin of life is difficult to study because we have no direct way to study the conditions on the early Earth. But geology faced similar problems and yet we have a good understanding of how the planet formed and how it works. You can be skeptical but the argument you advanced in this thread is wrong.
Comment by olegt — September 5, 2009 @ 11:30 am
September 5th, 2009 at 11:34 am
There is no scientific argument for the counter opposite.
Comment by Bradford — September 5, 2009 @ 11:34 am
September 5th, 2009 at 11:42 am
And yet, there is still no scientific argument for design.
Comment by Alan Fox — September 5, 2009 @ 11:42 am
September 5th, 2009 at 11:46 am
im not trying to step on any toes, but….
if the only information we possess, more or less, is that we are here today somehow or another, but cannot seem to gather much more info than that, how does that end up verifying OOL?
how are they not proposing an atheist-non-god of the gaps?
i know theres some issues with me viewing this way, but i dont claim this subject to be the one i understand anything about really; go easy on me.
Comment by dantedanti — September 5, 2009 @ 11:46 am
September 5th, 2009 at 11:49 am
That's a common thought but I think it misses the mark. We may not get the precise conditions right and will never be able to know anyway. But if the exact conditions were reproduced there would not necessarily be a means of constructing life's origin.
The argument is that humans are confident with good cause that if they encounter an unfamiliar physical phenomeon on planet Jupiter, by studying it answers will be found explaining it. The object of study is available. It exists. OTOH, we may never find ET. Even if they exist. Or we may find ET. We verified the existence of atoms but not Sasquatch. When you label inferences as gapping you are subtly chiding for not believing in the power of a methodology to resolve a particular.
Comment by Bradford — September 5, 2009 @ 11:49 am
September 5th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Bradford, you're missing lots of points. We didn't encounter atoms, quanta, or fields, we postulated them! Geologists have never been to the young Earth, yet somehow they were able to reconstruct its beginnings. Did they find another one nearby or something?
Comment by olegt — September 5, 2009 @ 12:03 pm
September 5th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
One of the ways you postulate is to examine available evidence and available processes. We are after all on this planet and able to deduce things about physical structures we observe in the here and now. You can find fossilized evidence that clues us in to what happened in the past. Postulate all you wish about the orign of life. It's those messages stored in nucleic acids and the need to express them which leads me to believe there is a disconnect between prebiotic conditions and the actual causal genesis of the former.
Comment by Bradford — September 5, 2009 @ 12:16 pm
September 5th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Not all of us here, who are sympathetic to ID, believe that here is a scientific argument for design. I believe that ID is a better metaphysical explanation than naturalism for certain features we observe in the physical universe. Empirical science is not a metaphysical commitment but a methodological approach.
So, because we have had scientific breakthroughs in the past it logically follows some day we’ll be able to explain the origin of life completely in terms of natural causes. It is logically fallacious to argue that because we have established the atomic theory that someday we’ll be able to explain the origin of life.
It sounds to me like olegt has bought into "promissory naturalism", the idea that given enough time and progress science will be able to find a natural explanation for everything. I have no problem with science trying to find a natural explanation for the origin of life, I am just skeptical that any of the present speculative scenario’s are on the right track. Which hypothesis do you want us to embrace olegt? Protein first? RNA first? Pre-RNA replicators?
The problem with promissory naturalism is that it is apriori belief that naturalism is true. How do we know that naturalism is true? Is it self evident? That sound like religious faith to me.
Why is it so cool for modern intellectuals to be agnostic and skeptical toward religious belief but not to be agnostic and skeptical about some unproven pet scientific hypothesis? Why are certain theories turned into sacred cows where the agnostics and skeptics are treated scornfully? Once again that is demanding a metaphysical and ideological commitment. That turns science into scientism.
The bottom line is this, Olegt believes that someday science will be able to explain the origin of life naturalistically, however he can’t really back up that demand with a plausible theory so he has to demand that all of us believe that by faith.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — September 5, 2009 @ 2:36 pm
September 5th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
This thread is funny, since Newton himself provided one of the classic cases of God-of-the-Gaps reasoning when he asserted that divine tinkering had to occur to adjust the orbits of the planets to keep them stable. This is pretty much equivalent to invoking angels, which Bradford elsewhere says is just silly.
This is even better:
…thus proving that life has always existed. Here's what Bradford doesn't get: even anti-evolutionists agree that life can't have always existed. At some point in the history of the Universe, there was no life, then later there was. Either the cause was natural, and therefore, hopefully, eventually understandable; or it was a miracle, a God-of-the-gap. Bradford obviously prefers the latter, so why doesn't he just own it, and admit it proudly? His argument shouldn't be that it is wrong to accuse people like him of invoking a God-of-the-gaps; rather he should say, "Yes, I'm invoking a God of the gaps, and I'm proud of it, I think it's the best explanation!"
Comment by nickmatzke — September 5, 2009 @ 3:39 pm
September 5th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
JOHN_A_DESIGNER wrote:
John, you need to read my comment more carefully. I didn't say that science will definitely solve the puzzle of the origin of life. I said that the difficulties "should not deter us from studying" the question. Do you see the difference?
I challenge you either to quote my comments in which I tried to make such an argument. Absent that, you might as well acknowledge that you just made this up.
If you have no problem with science continuing its efforts then you should have no problem with my position—as I expressed it, not as you caricatured it.
Again, this is patently false. I never stated that science will definitely explain the origin of life. I only pointed out that the opposite extreme—the notion that science can never explain the origin of life—is not a defensible position. Bradford's defense of that position in the opening post was quite weak and the atomic theory was one of the counter examples to his line of argument.
Good luck next time, John.
Comment by olegt — September 5, 2009 @ 3:55 pm
September 5th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
If life spontaneously arises (like certain crystal structures) it would be much easier to assert a physical theory for its origin. Even if the theory had some holes, repeatable outcomes would suggest the origin of life is not that different from typical chemical reactions….
If there were spontaneous generation, one would not even need a workable theory to assert that the origin of life had a naturalistic cause. If spontaneous generation were true, we could rightly presume life has a naturalistic cause even prior to constructing a full theory of the origin of life….
When Rutherford scattering was discovered, naturalistic causes were inferred, there was no need to invoke deities, even though the consequences of Rutherford's work led to a major revision of physical theories….we could simply assert naturalistic causes because the phenomenon was repeatable.
If a phenomenon is not repeatable, we don't necessarily have to invoke deities either, but it would scientifically unjustified to claim it can be reduced to easily reproducible conditions when in fact it cannot be. Such is the case for the origin of the universe and possibly the origin of life.
The empirical data suggest OOL would be an exceedingly rare and highly unusual event. That rarity of that event seems to have strong support from all we know theoretically and empirically. Is that not a scientifically reasonable inference?
Let us assume for the sake of argument that the improbable origin of life does not necessarily imply ID, I still think it is scientifically reasonable to postulate OOL research will fail. Various physicists like Yockey as well as various chemists and computer scientists think life is not a probable outcome of ordinary conditions.
Thus if the Origin-of-Life is a unique event, can it be classified as a miracle? The same question would probably apply to the unique event which started the universe. Is it proper to say the Big Bang was a miracle?
At what point is it proper to admit unexplainable unique events like the Big Bang, and possibly the origin of life?
From a college physics text book:
I hope we will continue to learn much of the universe, but it seems a bit presumptuos to think we can explain everything about the physical universe, especially in terms of "ordinary" events.
If we say extraodinary events can't ever be an explanation, that would seem inconsistent with what we know about the origin of the universe. It seems the origin of the universe was an extraordinary event which we might not be able to explain.
Even Dawkins thinks the origin of life was a fairly unique event. I don't think claiming the origin of life was an extraordinarily special event is scientifically outrageous. On the contrary, it seems quite consistent with theory and observation.
Whether the Origin of Life implies ID is a separate question, but it certainly makes the philosophical case for ID more believable. Whether ID is science is less of my concern than whether it has a chance of being true.
If life spontaneously arose from non-living matter, I would probably dismiss ID.
From my vantage point, it seems OOL researchers are on the wrong side of the issue, it is they who are fighting sound scientific theories and empirical data. They are committed to trying to demonstrate the origin of life was not the result of an exceedingly improbable unique event. I don't think they will succeed, the evidence is against such an enterprise.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — September 5, 2009 @ 4:06 pm
September 5th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Once upon a time, "naturalistic" explanatations, as in explanations by reduction to some physical law, were seen as evidence of ID:
And Euler:
I suppose at the time of Euler and company, the universe, on the surface looked highly disorganized. The discovery of such a powerful underlying organization suggested to them that there was indeed design in the universe. This orderliness seemed "miraculous" to him.
This view by Euler as evidence of some form of ID was echoed by physicist Paul Davies in his book, "The Mind of God", namely, that naturalistic explanations in terms of mathematically accessible physical laws are not necessarily an argument against ID, but may actually be an argument in favor of ID. Davies argues the approximately classical behavior of much of the universe could have easily been erased if there were not fine tuning, and thus, there would be no possibility for the scientific enterprise to succeed without fine tuning of the laws of physics.
Wigner echoed that sentiment, that naturalistic laws and the scientific enterprise are a miracle.
I think science has demonstrated the existence of naturalistic laws, but has also demonstrated that these laws are not necessarily immutable.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — September 5, 2009 @ 4:29 pm
September 5th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
No, thus proving a non-telic emergence paradigm is grounded in preference, not observation.
Miracles are not Gods in gaps. If witnessed they're direct evidence for God. Nothing inferential required. As Bilbo pointed out in a related thread IDists are looking for different interpretations than divine miracles which call for correspondingly weaker inferences.
It's hardly a secret around here that I believe in the God identified by the NT and in his capacity for miracles.
A better response is that God's creative fingerprints are evident in the universe he created as well as in all that inhabit it.
Comment by Bradford — September 5, 2009 @ 6:02 pm
September 5th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
This would be possible in principle if spontaneous generation is the norm. However the scientifically verified norm is non-life remains non-life. An operationally viable scientific theory can be established through repeated experiments. This was true of mechanics, electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, and relativity.
With respect to OOL however, the outcome of those repeated experiments is, "non-life tends to remain non-life". The verified empirically scientific theory is "non-life tends to remain non-life" and this was the case since Pasteur's famous swan-neck flask experiments where he "pasteurized" away the bacteria. That is what the data says, and that is what the OOL researchers are trying to falsify.
The OOL researchers are actually going against well established scientific data and observation. How can this be consistent with science? The scientific conclusion is that "non-life tends to remain non-life". The OOL researchers are seeking an exception to this principle. It would be easy to say then that they too are looking for miraculous solutions since they are seeking to something to seriously break a well-established, empirically-verified scientific principle.
As it stands, the true "naturalistic" observation actually argues that "non-life remains non-life". This has been verified emprically ad nauseam and there is plenty of chemistry, physics, and computer science to back up the notion "non-life remains non-life" except under under unusual conditions.
Hard-nosed, scientific, empirical data says, "non-life remains non-life" except through contact with something living. It stands to reason, an un-natural event was the source of the first life, just like an un-natural event was involved in the origin of the universe. By "natural" I mean, ordinary, customary, and often repeated processes.
Whether God or ID is involved is a separate question, but trying to say life comes about by ordinary process flies in the face of scientific data. The origin of life appears to have been caused by extraordinary event. That seems to be a reasonable scientific inference.
To say, "extraordinary events and conditions are not allowed as explanations", seems contrary to open-minded inquiry.
And finally, it seems, Sean M. Carroll at least superficially does not rule out miracles as explanations.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — September 5, 2009 @ 8:36 pm
September 5th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Speaking as someone whom a monotheist would label an atheist, I’d like to contribute a little about the God notion.
First though: it is rarely defined in these discussions by people using the term and it should be. Second, I offer a few ways in which it has been, and continues to be used, noting in passing that many of them are not antithetical to a ‘scientific’ viewpoint.
Second, although there are many highly anthropomorphic depictions of the Deity principal, these tend to dwell mainly on the populist level, and there are many more philosophically sophisticated descriptions, even within conventional monotheistic traditions for example, that also are not necessarily antithetical to either classical or quantum-style paradigms and therefore also not in conflict with 'science' or 'naturalism'.
A small but important example: it often comes up that science can't really analyse definitively the nature of consciousness, but few would argue that consciousness is not part of the natural world. Perhaps the fault line currently existing between 'objective' and 'subjective' needs a rethink.
OK, on to
GOD:
Dictionary Definition: O.E. god "supreme being, deity," from P.Gmc. *guthan (cf. Du. god, Ger. Gott, O.N. guð, Goth. guþ), from PIE *ghut- "that which is invoked" (cf. Skt. huta- "invoked," an epithet of Indra), from root *gheu(e)- "to call, invoke." But some trace it to PIE *ghu-to- "poured," from root *gheu- "to pour, pour a libation" (source of Gk. khein "to pour," khoane "funnel" and khymos "juice;" also in the phrase khute gaia "poured earth," referring to a burial mound). "Given the Greek facts, the Germanic form may have referred in the first instance to the spirit immanent in a burial mound" [Watkins]. Cf. also Zeus. Not related to good. Originally neut. in Gmc., the gender shifted to masc. after the coming of Christianity. O.E. god was probably closer in sense to L. numen. A better word to translate deus might have been P.Gmc. *ansuz, but this was only used of the highest deities in the Gmc. religion, and not of foreign gods, and it was never used of the Christian God. It survives in Eng. mainly in the personal names beginning in Os-. (http://www.etymonline.com/inde... )
Note that ‘ansuz’ is related to the old languages letter ‘A’ (aleph), which obviously has some sense of being both primordial and part of the speech principle which relates back to the initial ‘call, invoke’ sense.
OK, so initially we have the basic idea of something primordial that can be called, summoned or in some way related to. But the key simple notion to most Westerners is that there is something vast out there that is greater than, or includes, the immediately perceivable, mundane setup.
But there are many other variants and I go through some in no particular order, just as they come to mind, referencing both 'god' and 'deity':
1. Notion of there being One that includes/pervades the Many, the many being the relative world of place and time in which limitless particularities of place, moment and events etc. occur.
2. The same as above but thought of as a Supreme Being, i.e. an individual like ourselves just on a much more cosmic scale (an anthropomorphic conception.)
3. Energy that has definite power, but the source and/or nature of that power is not immediately perceivable or comprehensible. Many examples of this: how seeds have the generative power to produce mighty oak trees; how wind can destroy anything in its path when aroused; same for water, fire, volcanoes, comets.
3b: same as above but in more human/animal terms: the power of nobility, of fearless rage in battle, of desperate love. Such power raises the game beyond the usual level; it can be seen by others; it can be invoked through training, discipline, creating situations.
4. Sense of presence that also has clearly identifiable energy but that cannot be physically confirmed or measured. Example: the power of grace, of violent aggression, ugliness, beauty. The power of attraction between male and female. The power/energy of dawn versus sunset versus night.
5. Deliberately manipulated atmospheric perceptions of 4) as in sacred or profane ritual. Just as demonic energy can be invoked, so also can sacred energy. And even if this is too arcane for most modern readers to accept, the power that occurs when 15,000 cram into a stadium to watch and cheer on a basketball match. There is energy there that is readily perceivable, that is different from similar types of psychological/cultural energy that one experiences on one’s own or around the family kitchen table with only 3-5 people; the same sort of group energy exists with a mob, or during a wedding ceremony, a rock concert, a political demonstration, or a national tragedy like JFK’s assassination, or 9/11 and so on. This energy is also a form of ‘deity’ in that it is a definite power or presence, can be invoked and manipulated, perceived and used, but has no apparently measurable (aka ‘scientific’ ) basis. And yet it exists.
6. The ‘gods’ of the kitchen, the hearth, the fields, the home, the bedroom, the boudoir, the pantry, the board room, the President’s Podium, the General’s aura of command, the squad, the Police, the County, the Country, a City, the Sea, the Tempest, dawn, the flowers, a flower, a blade of grass, a particular moment, a particular event. All such particular spheres, situations, conditions or events can be associated with a sense of particular ‘gods’, or heightened cultural/spiritual awareness.
7. Highly particular 'spirits', the notion referring to invisibly sourced by experientially tangible particularities of manifestation in terms of specific qualities. In traditional oriental medicine all the major organs are described as 'spirits' in the old texts, even 'deities', but that does not mean it was thought of in the way we use the terms in the West. In this case there is a very different energy pattern to kidney functions versus heart functions, and such energies (five major ones) also echo in other systems and relationships in the body-mind matrix of a human being, with various types of memory, function, organs and so forth supporting and restricting each other in a fundamentally simple, but systemically complex ecosystem/matrix. 28 different major styles of pulse readings (from 3 points in the wrist) were combined with listening to voice quality, color of skin, style of movements and body shapes to derive remarkably sophisticated diagnoses, all of which were described – and treated – as various manifestations of 'spirit'.
Now admittedly all the above dwell in the domain of what is now called the ‘subjective’. But note how many of them involve contextualising the direct experiences in the natural world, albeit within the frame of reference of how they are processed via what we call ‘consciousness’.
Consciousness is part of the natural world. It is quintessential to any sense, both ontological or epistemological, of the notion of ‘human being’ – either as noun or gerund.
In many cases, there is a sense of there being a ‘field’ that surrounds, contains or transcends the immediately perceivable physical boundaries of form as processed via the physical senses. This ‘field’ is something that became of more interest in quantum analysis and theory. There is acknowledgment that on many levels/aspects/particulars, the natural world is actually unstable, unreliable, illogical even. Particles can jump around erratically, even disappear momentarily, and yet the overall field in which they exist seems to have some sort of ongoing coherence. Also there is some evidence for this field notion in that in some particle experiments a movement in one location by one particle is precisely mirrored a long distance away by another particle with little or no time separation. Furthermore, according to some studies about gravitational influence, there is no time lag (this is contested but there is evidence on both sides I believe such that it is hard to determine), i.e. the influence of the moon on bodies in the Earth is not transmitted over time from the Moon to the Earth, rather happens instantaneously, indicating that there is an ongoing ‘field’ relationship between the two bodies that is larger, that contains, the particular bodies of the two respective planets.
So it is quite possible that a ‘god of the gaps’ notion is neither religious nor unscientific depending upon how one considers the notion of ‘god’.
My suspicion is that we will find, at some point, that the notion of ‘intelligence’ and ‘field/continuum’ will in many instances overlap. To be sure there seems to be a difference between the intelligence experienced by individual living beings and that displayed by sophisticated ecosystems. We cannot tell for sure if one exists without the other, i.e. if matter exists anywhere without the presence of consciousness on some level somewhere, but even if it does, the non-anthropomorphic ‘field’ notion might well be found to contain many of the same qualities as ‘consciousness’ in that there is some sort of transcendent principle that ‘contains’ particularities, a larger context, a larger field that is not immediately apparent.
So it might well be the case that God is indeed in the ‘gaps’ between physical particulars – and also materialist theories about them. ‘God’ comprises many of the aspects of experience and the natural world that science admits it cannot evaluate one way or another.
Perhaps the entire polemic is much ado about nothing?
Finally a small point about atoms: I have read texts from the 1200's that describe not only atoms but the particular classifications of what are now called 'quarks' in terms that are almost identical, i.e. 'top to bottom', 'bottom to top', centre to fringe, suddenly appearing, simultaneously appearing, and so on. I am not sure exactly how such insights were derived, but their similarity is striking.
On a lighter note, that same text also claims that on every atom there are cities in each of the six main directions, and on each atom in each being in those micro cities there are yet more cities and so on ad infinitum.
Fanciful, yes. But there is some marginal evidence even for this in the 50,000x photos of small beings, some of whom have uncanny resemblance to others that are 50,000 larger even though their environment is essentially a whole different world. They were right about the quarks, so maybe nanotechnology is the next great thing: maybe we should all shrink down to being only .000001 millimetres tall and thereby conserve natural resources?
Comment by ash — September 5, 2009 @ 9:06 pm
September 5th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Yes.
Okay, maybe I read through the posts a little too quickly, so I went back and read through them more slowly and carefully. I still don’t understand what the atomic theory has to do with the origin of life. In my opinion the two are not even analogous. The atomic theory was developed by studying something that exists contemporaneously with the investigator. The origin of life is something that happened in the distant past. In the former you are not only making inferences but you can develop experiments that directly target what you are trying to investigate. In the latter you have to make inferences about environmental conditions, that according to virtually everyone involved in the study of OoL, was radically different from what we find today. In the former you have an observable continuity of cause and effect; in the latter you have discontinuity and a lot of unknowns. I think Bradford was trying to make a similar point, but then again maybe he was convinced by your counter example.
Okay if you agree that is not a given, “that science will definitely explain the origin of life” then will you agree that people who insist that the origin of life must have a natural explanation are just as guilty of using an argument from ignorance as people that use the so called god of the gaps argument.
On the other hand, you have the right to believe whatever you want. However, at the present time your belief is no more scientific than mine.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — September 5, 2009 @ 11:17 pm
September 6th, 2009 at 12:08 am
JAD is making a notable point in highlighting important differences between atoms and putative precursor life forms. Although experimenters could not see atoms Ernest Rutherford and his students were able to perform experiments using alpha particles which yielded data suggesting a model. With hindsight we can see that although the experiments leading to knowledge about atoms were ingenious the problem before experimenters was simple by comparison to cellular origins and the question was not is there a model but what type of model are we dealing with? There was continuity to progress not seen with OOL findings where even the prebiotic generating capacity for the objects of models (RNA, proteins etc.) is suspect.
Comment by Bradford — September 6, 2009 @ 12:08 am
September 6th, 2009 at 12:27 am
Bradford,
It pays to know that scattering experiments with gold and alpha particles were performed in 1909. By that time, the atomic hypothesis was already validated by other means. Perrin determined Avogadro's number, thus weigheing atoms, in 1908. Atomic elements were determined and classified by Mendeleev in the late 19th century.
The history of atomic theory undermines your thesis. Even though atoms could not be directly observed, scientists learned a great deal about them.
Comment by olegt — September 6, 2009 @ 12:27 am
September 6th, 2009 at 9:51 am
What are OOL parallels to the various experimental approaches used to establish the nature of atoms? What exactly are objects of study for origin purposes?
Comment by Bradford — September 6, 2009 @ 9:51 am
September 6th, 2009 at 9:56 am
I asked what objects of study are but we can cite what they have been. They have been the very basic building block biochemicals found in cells. What is needed is to study a process. But that's where the dilemna kicks in. Whereas there were atoms and molecules interacting and the study of that yielded modern chemistry, there is no equivalent in the OOL World.
Comment by Bradford — September 6, 2009 @ 9:56 am
September 6th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Here is one God-of-the-gaps argument from Quantum Mechanics.
The following was as an affirmation of one of Zeilinger's experiments that supposedly refuted "realist" views of physics.
http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/aspec...
Richard Henry posted a slightly less bold polemic in Nature:
The Mental Universe
At first I thought Richard Conn Henry was satirizing various Quantum Interpretations. But now I think he was being serious in light of
http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/quant...
In another essay, Richard Conn Henry does give an opinion about ID in a backhanded sort of way:
http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/woit....
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — September 6, 2009 @ 11:22 am
September 6th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Bradford wrote:
It helps to read the opening post, in which you pointed out that successful scientific theories (such as classical mechanics and geometrical optics) dealt with objects and phenomena
You then reinforced it with a couple of other examples:
And finally you concluded:
In short, successful science sticks strictly to that which is familiar to everyone and can be seen and touched. Therefore science can't successfully deal with the origin of life.
Your premise is clearly wrong: while mechanics and ray optics deal with everyday objects, science has successfully worked with that which it could not see and touch. Atoms are the most obvious example: no one has seen or touched an atom in the 18th and 19th century, yet scientists were able to develop the atomic theory to the extent that atoms were classified and weighed. That is why I mentioned the atomic theory Bradford: to show that your premise was wrong.
There are plenty of other examples where scientists postulated the existence of unknown objects that were later discovered. Astronomer Le Verrier explained anomalies of Uranus's orbit by postulating the existence of another planet, Neptune. Pauli explained apparent violations of conservation laws in weak nuclear decays by postulating a new particle, neutrino, which was only discovered experimentally 26 years later. The Standard Model of particle physics relies a great deal on a Higgs field, even though we have not yet detected the Higgs boson.
That science is based on common sense is a myth, Bradford.
Comment by olegt — September 6, 2009 @ 1:17 pm
September 6th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
I think you mean "biological life can't have always existed". But, is "life" biological? If biological life was a novel invention, then it's inventor was not biological. So how do we know that the essence of life is biological? Or is the biological world we observe just a series of empty shells: transient carriers of non-biological life?
Comment by Daniel Smith — September 6, 2009 @ 1:29 pm
September 6th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I think Bradford's point is that atoms are examples of existing phenomena that can be tested while OoL was a transient phenomena that can't.
I think you know that olegt, you're just side-stepping the issue.
Comment by Daniel Smith — September 6, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
September 6th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
No, Daniel, I did not side-step that, either. I mentioned geology here and Bradford's response did not address the objection. The ball is in his court.
Comment by olegt — September 6, 2009 @ 1:39 pm
September 6th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Atoms and other examples alluded to are real phenomenon and their investigation has yielded much fruit. As the OP notes and Salvador recognized as well, we never observe life arising from non-life. That could be the clue indicating why past efforts have fallen short and why continued efforts, incorporating the same presumptions, will yield continued frustrations.
Comment by Bradford — September 6, 2009 @ 5:06 pm
September 6th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Bradford,
It's easy for you to say that atoms are real at this point in time—the beginning of the 21st century. By now scientists have observed and manipulated individual atoms.
That certainty, however, was not always there. If you go back to the end of the 18th century, there was no atomic theory, just a philosophical viewpoint known as atomism. No one had seen an atom by that time. The current laws of chemistry were formulated in terms of mass quantities, not the number of atoms. Could you say, as an 18th-century man, that atoms were real? I don't think so. If scientists followed your advice they would not formulate the atomic theory in the early 19th century.
That's just one snapshot. You can repeat that with neutrinos. Now we know they are real, but in 1932 they weren't. You could not do any experiments with neutrinos because you had no way of detecting them. They were totally ephemeral back then. A figment of Pauli's imagination.
Comment by olegt — September 6, 2009 @ 5:43 pm
September 6th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Hi Braford,
I suppose that depends on your definition of being alive. Are bacteria or sperm frozen at -180C alive? They certainly are when you warm them up. Well, most of them anyway.
Or maybe not. No way to really tell at this point I should think. Do you think funding should be withdrawn from current OOL research? I doubt it. Even if it's a wild goose chase, it might still yield some useful chemical knowledge.
Comment by JarrodF — September 6, 2009 @ 5:51 pm
September 6th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Beyond that, physical theory of atoms and physics have a practical use to us. What practical use could any OOL theory ever have? At best, any conjectures about OOL can only describe what may have happened. They cannot tell us what in fact happened, and they can have no practical benefit to humans now. Is OOL a waste of time?
Comment by kornbelt888 — September 6, 2009 @ 6:12 pm
September 6th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Re: "Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists."
Actually, this has been the position of the dominant schools of Buddhist 'philosophers' since at the latest around 100 AD. These same schools have detailed descriptions of particle theory (which I referenced obliquely in a post up above from a later text). This is not a belief or faith-based position but one derived from observation of mind and matter and rigorously worked through over centuries of investigation and lively argument. It is also similar to most pre-Buddhist philosophical traditions of which only fragments remain from around 500 BC in the West, and somewhat earlier – though not definitively documented – in the East.
The problem with this is that in the West the notion of 'mind' is firmly anchored in the notion of an individual mind-er, (aka ego or self) and this is projected onto the notion of 'God' as well, i.e. that if there is a 'design-er' it is a single existens, sort of like a super-huge version of an individual human being in some way.
However, intelligence/mind does not necessarily exist only in the context of an individual sentient being.
As I have tried arguing in other threads, I think it is more accurate to view 'intelligence' as that aspect of a sentient being that is accessing/inter-relating with/joined somehow with a larger field/continuum, which latter transcends the space-time dimension in which matter and time define the boundaries of physical 'reality'.
The interesting thing to me about some of the quantum discoveries/implications is that although they were grounded in solid physical science, they broke through materialist barriers. Even though they did, however, scientists have not been able to incorporate those 'mind-related' conclusions and seem to be continuing on as if nothing has changed.
The obvious next great field of enquiry for science is to investigate the differences and inter-relationship of mind and matter rather than insisting that the only fact that a bona fide scientist can consider as such is something measurable only on the physical plane.
This is plain (pun intended) silly!
Comment by ash — September 6, 2009 @ 9:51 pm
September 6th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Addendum re:
"As I have tried arguing in other threads, I think it is more accurate to view 'intelligence' as that aspect of a sentient being that is accessing/inter-relating with/joined somehow with a larger field/continuum, which latter transcends the space-time dimension in which matter and time define the boundaries of physical 'reality'."
That is when considering individual intelligence. However, the underlying nature/essence of that intelligence is not something contained only within the physical boundaries of the individual being. Similar in a way, perhaps, to how with each breath we are connected with all the air in our planetary atmosphere, not just the particular air that goes into the lungs at that moment. It is impossible to determine a precise point where the air in the lungs is separate from the air on the other side of the world. There is no such point. Similarly the underlying nature of mind is more like the field/container in which all phenomena arise-manifest-play. In this sense, the continuum/field notion – which is acceptable in scientific lingo – might actually be one and the same as 'intelligence' albeit not in the sense of an individually generated version.
Individual mind is filtering universal mind (the continuum), but the underlying essence of mind is not bounded by those filters just as an individual wave on the ocean, although unique, particular and observable, is not fundamentally different from or separate from the larger body of all the worlds oceans which are analagous to being a 'universal continuum' or one-god principle.
Comment by ash — September 6, 2009 @ 10:01 pm
September 7th, 2009 at 3:23 am
Bradford,
I get kind of tired of pointing this out to you, but the problem with ID's god of the gaps argument isn't the gaps. Everyone understands there are gaps. I'm even prepared to stipulate, if it helps you any, that science has no idea whatsoever how life came to be.
That doesn't help ID one bit. ID is still just sticking a god in that gap. Even if you want me to stipulate that "naturalism" is also a god being put into that gap, that's still no help: that just makes ID as bad as you say naturalism is.
Comment by don provan — September 7, 2009 @ 3:23 am
September 7th, 2009 at 6:36 am
There is a slight distinction. ID is claiming "Intelligence" is a more adequate explanation than an unguided naturalistic process such as natural selection, this is especially true in the Origin-of-Life question where even many biologists agree, natural selection is an inappropriate mechanism to invoke.
The claim of ID as the cause of life is falsifiable, it is not formally provable. This is not quite as strong as insisting "only God can fill that gap", but it is claiming Intelligence is a better (not necessarily the ONLY) explanation.
I see no harm, in a scientific sense in trying postulate some sort of description of what would be an adequate solution to the OOL problem.
If spontaneous generation were the norm, I'd probably be on the anti-ID side of the argument. Even without a working theory, if there were spontaneous generation, I would presume by default there is no special need of intelligence as a cause any more than I need to presume an intelligence is needed to make water evaporate in the presence of sufficient heat.
The problem is the natural world argues against life arising from non-life. Naturalism requires ordinary repeatable mechanisms. The architecture of life resists explanations by simple repeatable mindless mechanisms.
For example, the existence of a house of cards is not in-and-of-itself a violation of physical law, but its assembly is not consistent with simple repeatable physical mechanisms.
It is certainly more believable that ID is the answer with respect to a house of cards because we know and see with our own eyes who the intelligent designers are, and we know they are capable and motivated to construct such artifacts. So even if I don't see a human in the act of making a house of cards, when I stumble upon a house of cards, I presume:
1. it is the product of ID
2. humans are the intelligent designer
We don't have such luxuries of witnessing the Intelligent Designer in action with respect to the OOL question. I don't disrespect the anti-ID side for reluctance or skepticism to accept ID in light of the fact that we don't see the Intelligent Designer active today in a manner as convincing as the sun rising every day.
That said, what would a "mindless" mechanism have to do to create life?
The work of OOL researches is comparable to finding simple mechanisms for the formation of house of cards. The problem is that random energy flow is more likely to prevent the formation of a house of cards than help it.
Similarly, the undirected application of energy to chemicals is more likely to prevent life from assembling spontaneously than help.
So in light of these considerations, what would a "mindless" mechanism have to do to create life? It would have to behave like an intelligent designer that can direct energy flow in a constructive ways.
At one time in my life, I believed God used naturalistic mechanisms to create life, just like I believed God used naturalistic mechanisms to make the sun rise every day. I can no longer believe that God used a naturalistic path to create life.
And even if I didn't believe in God, from a scientific standpoint, I would have to argue the mechanism which made life is not in operation today and it is unlikely to be found.
I just don't think it is reasonable to assume ordinary mechansims can spontaneously construct computational, information processing systems which we see in life. I don't fault someone for wanting to find a naturalistic answer, but from my vantage point, naturalistic answers don't seem believable.
I liken the search for naturalistic OOL closer to the search for perpetual motion machines than the search for Higgs bosons. The undetected "god particle" in physics is the Higgs boson, I would postulate the "god particle" in the search for OOL is intelligence, not any mechanism we see in operation today….
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — September 7, 2009 @ 6:36 am
September 7th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Why is it better?
And the argument is? Any suggestions about repeatability of prebiotic processes? How does “architecture of life resist explanations”?
“Spontaneously” is a creationist red herring.
Have you ever considered what information a designer would need before creating life? Anything but a supernatural entity with the power to look into the future he himself is about to create to learn what he needs to create life? Like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Ever tried that? Don’t believe that kind of supernatural power exists. Don’t believe the little green men could have done it either. Don’t know any reason why natural forces could not, though.
Comment by Satolep — September 7, 2009 @ 12:18 pm
September 7th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Here is a video of the construction of a house of cards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
The architecture of a house of cards is not amenable to construction via non-intelligent applications of physical forces. The construction process does not violate physics, but the architecture and materials would resist explanation by anything other than the application of intelligence. Care to suggest how a non-intelligent process will construct such an artifact?
The computational capabilities of a self-replicating Turing maching (aka a living cell) are substantially more difficult to construct than a house of cards. Just ask those who are in the computer chip and computer manufacturing industry.
You are welcome to keep believing the architecture of the cell can just spring up without intelligent direction. Building a house of cards through the action of wind and shaking have more chances of success than assembling a computer spontaneously from random molecules in a pre-biotic soup.
One might argue more time and chance will solve the problem, but it is evident, unless the forces are carefully directed, time and chance will tend to destroy certain architectures rather than construct them. Time and chance are the enemy of such architectures, not the friend. The only friend of such architectures is an intelligent designer of some sort.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — September 7, 2009 @ 12:46 pm
September 7th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
STC: although probably the least educated here in terms of science in general and evolution theories in particular, I find your arguments/description above of a key aspect of the polemic on the mark – at least as far as I understood things when first dipping into the ID debate a few years back, namely:
"There is a slight distinction. ID is claiming "Intelligence" is a more adequate explanation than an unguided naturalistic process such as natural selection, this is especially true in the Origin-of-Life question where even many biologists agree, natural selection is an inappropriate mechanism to invoke."
That was my understanding. Now a convinced theist might conclude from adopting the ID hypothesis that God is 'the designer', but the ID argument which I recall first reading about never posited a 'designer', rather that certain aspects of intelligent design inherent in organic structures do not indicate that they are the result of random ('mindless') causation. In this context, I found the presentation of irreducible complexity very convincing.
I think it is irresponsible of those arguing against ID to keep putting in 'red herrings' (or on this board numerous references to 'green fairies' for some reason!). Random causation as an over-arching principle is no more substantive than a Humongous Green Fairy.
That said, I do take issue with one of your points, namely that I am not convinced that the OOL processes are no longer present because I 'believe' – and it is only a belief that I cannot substantiate – that the processes from which life originate are ongoing, i.e. they were in the present at the beginning and they are continuously present all along. Furthermore, I think our conception of 'beginning' or 'origin' is distorted, if not totally fallacious, when we imagine a starting point long ago in the past before which there was nothing, or rather that there was a definitive 'first moment' the causes for which no longer exist.
This is analogous to a situation in which a billiard ball, having been rolled off the roof of a house by a child, let us say, ends up killing a dog napping in the sun in the yard below. The action of the child in releasing a ball has nothing to do with the result – the death of a dog – except insofar as it was part of a causative chain. In itself, the movement of a hand releasing a ball is one thing, whereas the rolling down of the ball is another, and its impact on the skull of Poor Fido is yet another. That is how causation is thought of.
There is some simple truth to this, of course, but I belief overly simple. Not to suggest that the child secretly wished to kill the dog, or that there is some mysterious 'karmic' reason why it was the dog's time to die, but that there is an overall field/continuum/context that binds together the seemingly different aspects of the single causative chain without which such chain could never have unfolded as such.
In this field/context we will find elements which comprise the essence of intelligence, even 'design', even if there was no intention on the part of any of the agents involved to effect the result of Fido's untimely demise.
So when considering some of the aspects of 'design' or 'intelligence' and 'origins' I think it is a mistake to assume that only those things that are trying to achieve a desired end on the apparent relative level are causative or intelligent. There is a little more to it than that, involving how the overall setup is created and continues to be created moment by moment.
I 'believe' that such 'creation' is ongoing this very moment and not only something which existed/functioned in the past but which no longer exists/functioned now. I cannot prove this, but nor do I perceive any evidence anywhere that it is false.
Comment by ash — September 7, 2009 @ 2:08 pm
September 7th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Agreed. There is uncertainty in position.
Consider the manufacture of a car, say a fine car like a Honda Accord. It is arguable there is a collective intelligence which constructs it. The universe has a collective intelligence composed of at least humans, and possibly animals. I personally think on top of this is a discrete, distinct Super Intelligence which some will call God (or in Richad Conn Henry's case, GoS).
The hypothesis of ID does not depend on a specific form of intelligence.
The postulate of a Universal Intelligence has been bumped around by various physicsits. It is speculative, but it seems the thought hasn't been completely ruled out.
A popular interpretation of Quantum Mechanics called "decoherence" is one interpretation where a conscious mind is not an essential component to physics but is a passive spectator.
Still, there continues to be a school of thought among physicists that think a plausible description of physics must include conscious minds as an essential ingredient of physics, that there must of necessity be a non-material realm to make the material realm possible.
I don't have anywhere near the background to say one way or another. I can only cite the opinions of others far more qualified on the matter.
I just ordered Kuttner and Rosenblum Quantum Enigma which is written for non-physics students.
A very formal, highly technical treatise is written here:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quan...
I will admit I need to study another semester of Quantum Mechanics just to understand some of the arguments in that paper.
Wheeler is famous for postulating how current events can influence the past, or how future events can influence he present. This was the famous "double-slit delayed choice" experiment.
This experiment led Wheeler to postulate that animal and human intelligence in the present helped create the conditions in the past which created the universe.
This of course seems just plain wierd. From the above link, Bohm maks passing makes reference to a solution:
"A Universal Mind" is a God-of-the-gaps solution. I don't think Bohm and Hiley would necessarily stand by such a postulate, and I don't mean to say they really believe in a Univesal Mind. But it seems the Universal Mind option has been put on the table, and some physicists consider it a serious option.
Let me concede, the Universal Mind is a speculative postulate. But supposing a Universal Mind exists, then it make the Origin-of-Life via Intelligent Design more plausible. We don't necessarily have to invoke anything that hasn't been at least put on the table from physicists, with the caveat, the idea of a Universal Mind is speculative.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — September 7, 2009 @ 2:20 pm
September 7th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Sorry, Sal, this is not a distinction at all. All you are saying here is natural processes don't fill the gap, therefore "Intelligence" is "more adequate", even though intelligence doesn't in any way fill the gap, either. You can't get a better example of a god-in-the-gap argument.
Natural selection is, of course, a complete and utter red herring, and I find it annoying that you would try to drag it across the conversation.
No, it's not falsifiable. If we could go back in time and watch the process, and it was exactly like Dawkins thinks, you could still say an intelligent designer was behind it just as easily as you do today. And not being "formally" provable just means it isn't a hypothesis at all.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "postulate", but in most senses of the word, it is, indeed, a harm to postulate anything of the sort. If you'd like to hypothesize such a thing, I have no objection, but ID doesn't do that, either, because it makes no clear claim that can be proved (as you yourself just admitted).
There is quite a bit of disagreement with you on this point. Wholesale disagreement, in fact. It's disengenuous of you to pretend you're stating some kind of indisputable fact here.
Yep. The only problem here is your inability to imagine a mindless mechanism doing that.
So what did He use? How would we be able to distinguish it from the naturalistic path? Start trying to answer those questions with provable hypotheses, and ID would finally be doing something other than blowing smoke.
Comment by don provan — September 7, 2009 @ 3:28 pm
September 7th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Perhaps it is better to say mindless versus intelligent cause. If one considers humans a "natural" phenomenon, then one can assert even natural causes can create a house of cards.
I went to great trouble to show that a Universal Mind is a possibile (albeit speculative) entitity. Thus, one might even say God is natural as well.
To clarify the discussion, we can frame it in terms of whether mindless unintelligently sequenced events can construct things like a house of cards and the computer systems we find in life.
And just to make you feel better, perhaps you can assert a hypothetical entity like God is natural.
To borrow Bradford's phrase, the problem for OOL is that events must "intelligently sequenced" in order for life to emerge.
No, the problem is that mindless process don't create life in physical reality, the only places where mindless mechanisms work is in imagination of OOL researchers, not in their actual laboratory experiments!
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — September 7, 2009 @ 3:51 pm
September 7th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
No, that's still not the point. You're placing a god in the gap because you have no positive support. It's as simple as that.
You say "possible", but all you mean is "you can't rule it out, nah-nah-nah." If all you have is "possible", it's a god-in-the-gap. Indeed, if all you have is possible, there's no gap to begin with: you haven't actually ruled out "mindless forces", you've just asserted they are not possible. Well, you can't rule them out, nah-nah-nah.
Yes, in fact, that clarifies it quite nicely: there's isn't one thing there about any ID hypothesis, just a claim about what can't be. You're just defining a gap to put your unsupported explanation in.
That would just be obfuscation, a silly attempt to confuse the discussion by redefining "natural" to mean something entirely different that what it means normally.
And the problem with that is that there is no reason to think natural processes can't accomplish such "sequencing". Throwing in the adjective "intelligently" doesn't actually describe what it is that cannot be accomplish by "mindless" forces.
Your unsupported assertions grow tiring.
Comment by don provan — September 7, 2009 @ 4:12 pm
September 7th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
He has positive support. Your subjective view of what constitutes positive evidence accounts for your disagreement. It is as simple as that.
Comment by Bradford — September 7, 2009 @ 5:16 pm
September 8th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Trying to equate a non testable theory like origins with a testable one is called piggy backing, regardless of substantiated predictions. Mathematical theories are more quantitative and do not share the same dynamics and paradigms that make up evolutionary theory. Could'v of would'v might have,maybe is getting kind of old.
Comment by themayan — September 8, 2009 @ 9:06 am
September 8th, 2009 at 11:02 am
What would count as "positive support" for you? Would you have to see God for yourself? For the record, I don't think asking to see God is an unreasonable demand, nay, I think wanting to see direct evidence of God is a good thing.
But just to clarify, perhaps it would helpful to spell out what you mean by "positive support".
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — September 8, 2009 @ 11:02 am
September 8th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I would count as positive support exactly what the words mean: evidence that showed it did happen. All you're presenting is evidence that "a mindless process" couldn't be the explanation.
CSI and IC and privilege planets, even if valid, only rule out a certain class of known explanations. They do not amount to any kind of positive evidence for any other explanation. After all these years, do you still not see that?
Comment by don provan — September 8, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
September 8th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
And what evidence would show it did happen? You're aren't being very descriptive.
Perhaps I don't, so perhaps you can articulate specifically what would count as evidence in your mind that it did happen.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — September 8, 2009 @ 12:27 pm
September 8th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Positive evidence for something involves elevating it above the null hypothesis. The case for ID simply reduces other cases down to the null hypothesis. Every single argument for ID can be recast in the form, "It can't be that, so it must be intelligent design." As much as IDers try to express these ideas as "Feature X shows intelligent design," the "proof" invariably involves showing why something else cannot generate feature X, never ever what it is about "intelligent design" that leads to feature X. No surprise, since "intelligent design" is intentionally kept undefined, making it impossible to show how it can lead to anything.
This is just basic logic, not some quirk of mine that I should have to explain to you.
Comment by don provan — September 8, 2009 @ 5:50 pm
September 8th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Granted, but you're still not providing much in the way of detail. You're only making a general statement, not a specific one.
Specifically, describe an observation that that would tell you it happened.
You can say "I don't know, Sal". That's fine. But it would help clarify the issue if you declared specifically what observation would persuade you it did happen or if you said, "I don't know what would count as positive evidence".
Well, it's true I'm a little slow, so specifically what observation again would persuade you ID did happen. Maybe you can suggest what observation would affirm ID conclusively for you.
Well again,I'm a little slow. Can you tel me what would elevate the claim of ID above the null hypothesis in your mind?
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — September 8, 2009 @ 6:53 pm
September 8th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
"The case for ID simply reduces other cases down to the null hypothesis. Every single argument for ID can be recast in the form, "It can't be that, so it must be intelligent design."
I sort of agree that ID reduces 'other cases down to the null hypothesis' though I suspect you could narrow it down to 'the Darwinian case'. However, I disagree with your characterisation of ID as a conclusion. 'Intelligent Design' is really a description of the processes presented in ordinary science-based evidentiary fashion demonstrating that certain aspects of current (versus OOL) organic processes can arguably be shown to NOT be the result of random, mindless genesis.
In other words, the evidence of intelligent design in organic structures nullifies materialist mindless mechanical blind random genesis. It is not positing that there is a 'designer' – although some might deduce this from the argument – simply that random genesis is not feasible. Given there is not all that much evidence for it even after more than a century, it's a reasonable point.
OK, you might say: forget about NS which Darwin himself admitted was a bit of a stab in the dark and might not hold up. The core thesis is that we all evolved from animated chemical soup, from inanimate physical matter into complex living sentient beings. The evidence for this is mainly the similarity in cellular and other structure between various separate species, and moreover especially within primate, insect, & plant groups etc.
It's a nifty idea. But has yet to be proven.
I go back to my friendly beef with Salvador C about origins, because they lead naturally out of the above, namely that the assumption that the processes involved with the origins are no longer present is highly questionable. Put it this way: it's an unverifiable assumption. Why not keep things more simple (and practical)? Why not just put more emphasis on studying the nature of life that is right in front of us right now rather than going down essentially speculative – if not indeed fictive – conceptual tunnels for which there is no way the scientific method as currently conceived (i.e. working with direct physical evidence) can possibly verify one way or another?
As to the consciousness Universal Mind business, I think this is what I keep niggling towards in my posts here. Part of what I have been groping towards articulating is that a stumbling block in contemplating/examining this stuff is the rather parochial way the English language handles the notions of 'mind' or 'consciousness'. Now in Sanskrit we would have about 50 words to play with here that have subtle but distinctly different shades of meaning. In our case, we mainly use both terms in reference to individual sentient beings, so the notion of Universal Mind, although quite reasonable in theory, is polluted cognitively such that immediately most people hearing the term begin to imagine some sort of Super Being, i.e. very very BIG, but also still an individual entity or personality of some sort.
This means also that in discussing design or intelligence issues, if there is a 'larger consciousness' element that it is immediately assumed cognitively – even by most atheist types considering it – that there is some sort of individual intent, something which atheists will understandably reject out of hand, but yet which cognitively they have also created unnecessarily due to their own habitual limitations of how they just assume that 'mind' is always something bounded within the context of an individualised, and therefore personalised, container.
I'll go back to an earlier thought which I think has merit even though I have never read it anywhere else as such:
Consciousness/mind is that which allows living beings to navigate through space-time. That's part of it. Another part of it is that consciousness CREATES space-time and from that creation comes particularity and from that ability of particularity to exist gradually emerge both inanimate and inanimate life forms all of which dwell within the larger context of the space-time continuum which itself is a veritable ocean, if you will, of 'consciousness' in which the whole kit and caboodle continuously swims.
There was no first moment in the sense that as soon as spacetime emerges it is essentially infinite in the sense that a new dimension has emerged. What is 'before' is not of that dimension and therefore outside any possible field of enquiry. That's creation, actually creating something totally new. But now I am rambling. The point is that if you don't think of consciousness-mind-intelligence as something that can only be filtered through individual sentient beings or imagined bigger individual beings, and you consider the possibility that just as our bodies are made of identifiable particles and components (including iron, gold, manganese etc. etc.) that in themselves are not particular to ourselves, so also mind may be 'made' of various 'elements' that exist all around, and the key one, I am suggestion, is the spacetime continuum itself, which also is an 'inanimate' aspect of the situation just like the elements in our bodies, but at the same time cannot truly be said to be inanimate since it is simply not possible for their to be four dimensions without consciousness. If you really consider what direction and duration are you have to 'grock' at some point that they are functions of consciousness without which there would be neither space nor time since only consciousness – using the term very loosely – can perceive the difference between the current moment and a previous one, or distinguish between an upper quadrant or a lower quadrant. Only living beings in spacetime can be aware of left and right, up and down, the things that quarks do. Such a spacetime continuum cannot exist without awareness to create it.
It is so incredibly simple and basic it is very hard to express in simple basic language.
And one doesn't have to go back into the past to analyse it but simply pay attention to what is happening right now.
Comment by ash — September 8, 2009 @ 10:48 pm
September 9th, 2009 at 3:50 am
I think I see much quirky reasoning but I’ll limit my response to the argument above. Firstly, I think arguments about OOL are irrelevant to the issue of ID vs. ToE. I find the theory that a process where mutations supply the input to a selection process offering species the option of adapting to changing environments a most adequate explanation, especially since that’s what the evidence seems to say. Don’t the incredible diversity of life and its occupation of every thinkable geographical, physical or chemical niche all over the planet advertise the same message “Kilroy was here”?
From kilometres down in rocks to kilometres high mountains, down to the bottom of the oceans? Life dependent on a designer standing by to design it out of survival bottlenecks?
I don’t see ID as an adequate explanation since it explains nothing.
The history of life extends over billions of years. Isn’t it about time we learned just a little about how, when and where the designer performed his magic? I envisage the designer as a giant invisible jellyfish in the sky, with tentacles all over the planet sprinkling thiotimoline wherever and whenever a new design like, say a bacterial flagellum is required.
If there is an official version of ID addressing the many questions an inquiring mind might have, I am unaware of it. What, if any research is being dome in this field of such enormous consequences for the future of mankind?
Comment by Satolep — September 9, 2009 @ 3:50 am
September 9th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Satolep:
What do you mean ID vs. ToE? I am an ID proponent and I see evolution as the best evidence for ID.
Satolep:
I guess you could attempt to create that as an hypothesis. Who is Kilroy and what evidence suggests that it was him specifically? However, so far the evidence only supports the hypothesis that some type of intelligence was required. Could have been Kilroy (if it is indeed shown that hypothesis has a non zero probability), could be a previous evolving intelligence, could have been a sufficiently organized information processing system such as the universe itself, could be God; the intelligence may have itself evolved in which case we have regress issues to deal with or the intelligence may be "non-evolving." There are lots of questions but no way to test these extra questions yet, as far as I can tell. We only have evidence that an intelligent system was most likely involved as part of the causal process.
Satolep:
… other than that there may be a potentially necessary cause of specific types of patterns. If one variation (I'll call it Dembski's variation) of ID is correct, ID also tells us that this cause is detectable through mathematical reasoning.
Measuring the age of the universe, in itself also *explains* nothing. It only tells us the age of the universe. It merely furthers our knowledge. Combined with other facts we may be able to reason toward an explanatory framework for a specific question, however by itself the age of the universe also *explains* nothing. Like ID Theory it merely furthers our knowledge, if correct.
If ID Theory is correct, we can the move on to explaining other things such as how an intelligent process does indeed create specific non-random, non-lawful patterns.
Satolep:
You mean the same type of magic required for you to design that comment of yours? Are you saying that you think your intelligence is magical or supernatural or something?
We can discuss how, when, and where if you like.
Satolep:
… and what does your "envisioning," ie imagination, have to do with reality? Do you have access to data that suggests the intelligent system most likely is an invisible aquatic animal with tentacles — a jellyfish specifically.
I highly doubt it and thus it seems that the anti-ID proponents such as yourself are the ones who merely provide caricatures based on imagination , whereas the ID proponents argue based on available evidence.
… and I'm just curious, why do you think "jellyfish" when the evidence points to "intelligence?"
Satolep:
I would highly recommend Stephen Meyers new book, "Signature in the Cell." Even though I don't agree with all of it, since I see abiogenesis as something that had to have occurred (and I'm somewhat partial to the RNA world hypothesis), It makes an excellent intro into ID Theory and the case for it.
Comment by CJYman — September 9, 2009 @ 2:54 pm
September 10th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I guess I'll be brief; we could go on for aeons without getting anywhere. But seriously, aren't we imposing too much of our own concepts on the universe when we suggest it is an "organized information processing system"
We don't even know that information is anything at all – just as mathematics, geometry, design or evolution are nothings.
WRT jellyfish, it is of course just a metaphor, an invisible jellyfish in the sky sharing some but maybe not all of the attributes of an average invisible designer.
For a starter, I would like to know if the designer indeed is a magician. If that is the case the debate is over, we will never find out.
If not, there are a lot of things we would have to start looking for.
Comment by Satolep — September 10, 2009 @ 4:02 pm
September 10th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Satolep:
It is one of the options on the table. Read "Programming the Universe" by Seth Lloyd.
Satolep:
Well then I guess we have nothing to discuss.
Satolep:
ID Theory only claims to be able to separate the attribute of intelligence from mere law and chance. IOW, ID Theory only claims to be able to detect the attribute known as intelligence, nothing more, nothing less. As it relates to the cause of life, there is as of yet no available evidence to infer the intelligence's physical looks. If you have any data that suggests otherwise, please bring it forward. Caricatures aren't helping the debate go anywhere.
Satolep:
The designer is just as magical as you are while you are designing these comments of yours. For starters, please provide a useful definition of magic as it relates to your own intelligence.
Comment by CJYman — September 10, 2009 @ 5:56 pm