 |
| The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues by Mike Gene |
 |
| Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body |
 |
| Catalyzing Inquiry at the Interface of Computing and Biology |
 |
| System Modeling in Cellular Biology: From Concepts to Nuts and Bolts |
 |
| The Plausibility of Life By Marc W. Kirschner and John C. Gerhart |
 |
| Agents Under Fire by Angus Menuge |
 |
| Life's Solution by Simon Conway Morris |
 |
| Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life by Hubert P. Yockey |
 |
| The Fifth Miracle by Paul Davies |
 |
| Nature, Design, and Science by Del Ratzsch |
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| Origination of Organismal Form by Muller & Newman |
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| Biased Embryos and Evolution by Wallace Arthur |
 |
| Rare Earth by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee |
 |
| The Privileged Planet by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards |
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| The Way of the Cell by Franklin Harold |
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| The Volitional Brain by Benjamin Libet |
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| Evolution in Four Dimensions by Eva Jablonka & Marion Lamb |
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| The Evolution-Creation Struggle by Michael Ruse |
May 27th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Hi All,
Thank you Mike for providing this very interesting film clip. Please excuse me if you feel what I am about to say is off topic.
The kind of evidence shown in the film clip is awe inspiring. It promotes questions like "How is all of this possible?". Many people are inclined to answer with "God Did It".
I admit it, when I hear "Intelligent Designer" I tend to think people are talking about God. There are exceptions (yes, Joy I am talking about you), but on the whole I think people mean God when they say "Intelligent Designer". So What?
The "So What?" comes when we try to form scientific hypotheses along with the application of Occam's razor. "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity" does not mean "the simplest explanation is the best". It is more subtle than that.
Providing a scientific hypothesis that "God creates all things and fire is created by rapid oxidation" violates Occam's razor because "God creates all things" is sufficient all by itself. Does that make the second part false? No, just unnecessary.
Creating a scientific hypothesis that starts with the assumption an "Intelligent Designer" (i.e. God) might exist ends up making anything and everything else unnecessary ala Occam's razor. Note I said that even an assumption that God "might exist" makes everything else moot. Because in this universe, if something can exist, it does.
This gets us to the main OMA/NOMA question. If God can't be detected in the OMA world, then it doesn't matter how many awe inspiring examples Mike finds or how complicated the mathematical equations Dembski creates, God will remain undetected. That puts God in the unknown AND unknowable magisterium, forever and completely protected by a NOMA wall.
If you like, think of God as the Ultimate Engineer that has made the ultimate invention. The universe wouldn't be the ultimate invention if God had to push special buttons or pull specific levers. It may be powered/controlled by God's continual presence but there wouldn't be anything as crude as a detectable, direct interface to its "user".
If you don't like that, then you will have to be content that most of us agree that nobody knows the Truth (capital "T"). Meanwhile, we can still talk about hypothetical models as academic exercises.
As an engineer, I need to build models to understand things. Sometimes they are actual prototypes; often they are just thought models. These models aren't intended to be a declaration of the final answer. In fact, more is learned about why a prototype/model doesn't work than why it does.
I have some time this week so I am going to be enhancing my ID model with things recently learned from Joy, MikeGene, Penrose and Hameroff. However, I don't want this to be just MY model. I would hope others from Telic Thought will provide constructive input even if they disagree with it.
I will tell you at the start, the model will inevitably cause controversy among those that wish to use ID as the road to proving God's existence. It will also run counter to the ID Movement's desire to maintain a Big Tent. Frankly, my dear fellow Telic Thought members, I don't give a [something the spam filter wouldn't like]. More politely"¦
So what?
Let's do science!
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 27, 2007 @ 12:51 pm
May 27th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Mike,
Get off YouTube and get back to finishing your book. Or you up on YouTube looking for more clues?
Comment by Mung — May 27, 2007 @ 7:46 pm
May 28th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Thought Provoker, I am, in the spirit of Spinoza, Hume, Einstein and your handle, going to re-write your post. But just slightly. I hope you don't mind. Here goes:
Okay!:mrgreen:
Now let's suppose that:
1) Some Laws of Nature exist, and exist independently of human beings; and no divine will exists
What empirical difference is there between that hypothesis and this one:
2) A divine will exists, and exists independently of human beings; and no Law of Nature exists
(and hence that there exists no Law against, for instance, bodily resurrection, virginal conception, changing water into wine, humans having mental power over brain motions, ghosts, two electrons attracting rather repelling one another once every twenty-five years, signals travelling faster than light, or, indeed, against anything at all happening)
or this one:
3) No Law of Nature exists and no divine will exists
?
If 1 and 2 are empirically equivalent hypotheses, then shouldn't Billy the Razor Kid be asked to start sharpening his trusty shaving implement with a view to lopping off Laws of Nature just as with, following your suggestion, God?
However, suppose one simply affirms 3 instead. What then can explain the apparent obtaining of Kirchhoff's 'circuit laws'? Or the apparent fact that every electron has −1.6022 × 10^19 coulomb of charge? Or the apparent law of gravity?
Were these apparent facts just flukes or amazing coincidences from a scientific point of view?
Comment by stunney — May 28, 2007 @ 6:22 pm
May 28th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
stunney,
You're off by 38 orders of magnitude on the charge of the electron. Good thing you're not in charge of nature.
Regarding Ockham, a God who maintains nature is more complicated than the set of laws needed to sustain it in his absence. He gets snipped, not the laws.
Comment by keiths — May 28, 2007 @ 7:55 pm
May 28th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
I wrote:
Wikipedia says:
Er,… Whatever.
The key points are:
a) 1. Some Laws of Nature exist, and exist independently of human beings; and no divine will exists
and 2 A divine will exists, and exists independently of human beings; and no Law of Nature exists
are empirically equivalent hypotheses;
and
b) a single, unitary divine will is intuitively a simpler hypothesis than the brute fact of there being (for no reason or purpose) a set of different impersonal Laws of Nature, just as positing a single rational will to explain the various voluntary, intentional actions human beings perform is intuitively a simpler hypothesis than the brute fact of there being (for no reason or purpose) an enormously complicated system of bodily biomechanics that arose merely by an evolutionary history strewn with accidents. Which, indeed, is why most people throughout human history have preferred the unitary rational human will hypothesis over the complex biomechanical hypothesis; it's simpler. As is the unitary rational divine will hypothesis for explaining the highly ordered physical universe. They're both simpler hypotheses in most people's opinion.
Asserting the contrary of b is, incidentally, not an argument for the contrary of b.
Comment by stunney — May 28, 2007 @ 9:14 pm
May 28th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Hi Stunney,
You wrote…
I notice you didn't follow your own pattern for #3. Let me remedy that to…
3 modified) No Law of Nature exists independently of human beings and no divine will exists independently of human beings.
I choose 3 modified.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 28, 2007 @ 9:58 pm
May 28th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
stunney wrote:
No, Wikipedia has the correct number. You got it wrong twice.
As for the incoherent doctrine of divine simplicity, I'll leave it to you to explain to us why the Trinitarian God is simpler than the Unitarian God, and why a God who conceives of all possible universes and makes millions of choices to bring about this one is actually simpler than one who just exists without bothering to bring about a universe at all.
Comment by keiths — May 28, 2007 @ 10:23 pm
May 29th, 2007 at 2:51 am
Thought Provoker wrote:
Er,… Whatever. LOL:lol:
You failed to answer the question, TP, much to my complete non-surprise. Here it is again:
Here I exposed the fallacious reasoning behind a certain kind of thought.
Incidentally, the following is, albeit valid, an atrociously bad argument:
P1 If someone doesn't understand the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, theism is false.
P2. Someone with a particularly wooden personality doesn't understand the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
C: Therefore, theism is false.
And also incidentally, only a particularly wooden personality would worry about what the charge on the electron is when faced with the apparent fact that, regardless of what its value is, it's identical for every electron.
Comment by stunney — May 29, 2007 @ 2:51 am
May 29th, 2007 at 3:42 am
stunney wrote:
Really. Who would be wooden enough to think that being off by a factor of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 is signficant?
Perhaps the person who quotes the value should bother to get it right, instead of blaming the person who notices the mistake.
On divine simplicity: you've shown us that you can evade the following questions; how about answering them this time?
I asked:
Comment by keiths — May 29, 2007 @ 3:42 am
May 29th, 2007 at 7:39 am
Hi Stunney,
I wrote…
"No Law of Nature exists independently of human beings and no divine will exists independently of human beings."
You responded with…
I answered the question. Your response was "Er,… Whatever, LOL"
I choose 3 modified.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 29, 2007 @ 7:39 am
May 29th, 2007 at 10:56 am
TP, you didn't answer any of the questions I asked.
Notice I didn't ask you to 'choose' one of those hypotheses or any other, with or without modification.
But that's okay.
Your actual responses (and those of a particularly wooden personality) were sufficiently and amusingly revealing.
Comment by stunney — May 29, 2007 @ 10:56 am
May 29th, 2007 at 11:07 am
But not as amusing and revealing as your continued evasion of my questions.
Comment by keiths — May 29, 2007 @ 11:07 am
May 29th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Hi Stunney,
You wrote…
Excuse me, I thought my modification provided and explained my answers.
You may want to look at my latest post in the ID and Consciousness thread.
It was talking about this link. It includes…
Provoking Thought
P.S. In case it still needs to be spelled out…
Q. However, suppose one simply affirms 3 instead. What then can explain the apparent obtaining of Kirchhoff's 'circuit laws', [etc]?
A. "Habit" (See Joy's use of the word).
Q Were these apparent facts just flukes or amazing coincidences from a scientific point of view?
A. Retrocausal necessity.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 29, 2007 @ 11:19 am
May 29th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Thought Provoker wrote:
The first question I posed was what empirical difference, if any, there is between a hypothesis that there are Laws of Nature instead of a Divine Will. May I take it that your answer is 'none'? And may I take it you therefore think that Laws of Nature and God both violate Ockham's Razor?
I'll come back to the question of Ockhamizing non-empirically different stuff presently.
I don't know which posts of Joy you're referring to. She has no posts at the ID and Consciousness thread so far. I also don't know why you put 'habit' in quotes.
Let's just focus for a moment on the role of the 'law' of gravity in the formation of stars and galaxies. Is your answer that there is no such 'law' independently of present human consciousness (or consciousness on Earth in general, since the Camrian era, plus any alien consciousness if such there be)?
If so, is it an accident that any consciousness ever arose on Earth (and elsewhere in the universe, if there is consciousness elsewhere)? Might it not have, or was it inevitable?
Given consciousness, could it have developed differently such that it might have retrocaused a different set of 'laws'? For instance, could consciousness have retrocaused a world in which the precise magnitude of charge on electrons failed to be identical from one electron to another? Could it have retrocased a Newtonian set of 'laws' rather than a quantum mechanical set? Could it have retrocaused a world in which circuit 'laws' were different? Or in which there were no quarks?
And if there are concepts of alternative 'laws' that consciousness could have come up with, why were the actual 'laws' the ones consciousness retrocaused (assuming that a multiverse is terra incognita) rather than the alternative ones?
But in any event, let me now pose anew the same kind of basic question I started with:
1) Some retrocaused "Law of Nature Concepts" exist; and no divine will exists
What empirical difference, if any, is there between that hypothesis and this one:
2) A divine will exists, and exists independently of human beings; and no retrocaused "Law of Nature Concepts" exist
or this one:
3) No retrocaused "Law of Nature Concepts" exist and no divine will exists
?
Absent differing empirical consequences, in what way would one be able to justify the claim that your preferred hypothesis obeys your oft-repeated injunction/desire to 'do science'?
I provided the link before, but here again is a post of mine pointing out what I regard as a flaw in Penrose's book, The Road to Reality, which can also serve to illustrate a similar flaw in the thinking of particularly wooden personality types:
Given the fine-tuning issue, I think it's silly to suggest that God would not be able to figure out why the fine-tuning of physical parameters is necessary for life, when people like Martin Rees and Leonard Susskind and Roger Penrose himself can figure out that even slightly different parameters would lead straight to a lifeless universe in short order.
God is smarter than all of them combined. Or, as I have styled it, God is (the field of) "˜infinite self-communicating information'. Logically, God has to be self-communicating because he's the First Cause of information (hence it's not originally communicated by anything else). And God has to be conscious, because unlimited information must be self-aware—-if it wasn't, that would constitute a limit on information. And God has to be perfectly rational and moral, because infinite information includes all the truths of reason and morality, and perfect awareness and understanding of them.
We can see this last point by reflecting on the fact that possession of the property of being the particular grain of sand, s1 is an informationally 'poorer' or more limited state than is possession of the property of conscious understanding of every fact there is about s1.
Once more, let me quote Dummett, as I think he too sees clearly that unlimited information necessarily implies unlimited self-aware mind:
And again here.
Comment by stunney — May 29, 2007 @ 2:22 pm
May 29th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Hi Stunney,
I read the link the first time you posted it.
I understand you "…think it's silly to suggest that God would not be able to figure out…" and do everything.
You understand my response to that is "I don't know the Truth, do you?".
If you want to convince me to accept your OMA truth you need to do it on my terms, not yours. Otherwise we can both just hide behind our NOMA walls.
I am doing my part in trying to meet you halfway. Did you look at this link?
Regards,
TP
P.S. Here and here is where Joy talked about quatum weirdness habit. I put "habit" in quotes to indicate I was quoting Joy.
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 29, 2007 @ 2:52 pm
May 29th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Thought Provoker wrote:
Er, that's why I asked:
In other words, for the sake of OMA, I'd like to know what scientifically detectable differences there could possibly be as between hypotheses 1, 2, and 3.
Yes. It looked rather long. Are suggesting that it specifies some different empirical consequences that flow from the three aforementioned hypotheses, and that I have to read the whole thing to discover what the differences are?
Comment by stunney — May 29, 2007 @ 3:37 pm
May 29th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Hi Stunney,
Hypotheses 1 and 2 attempt to prove a negative "…and no divine will exists" or "…and no Law of Nature exists" respectively. However, I didn't need to address them since I told you my choice was 3, "No Law of Nature exists independently of human beings and no divine will exists independently of human beings." I think this can be scientifically addressed because it can be turned into a positive.
The "laws of Nature" and/or "divine will" are the direct result of human consciousness.
I provided you and excerpt from the link showing you Stanley Sobottka's opinion on the subject.
I believe he postilates that the "laws of Nature" are the direct result of consciousness, period.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 29, 2007 @ 4:16 pm
May 29th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Thought Provoker wrote:
A hypothesis is by definition not an attempt to prove anything. Hypotheses are hypotheses, not arguments.
What empirical, scientifically detectable differences, if any, follow from "No Law of Nature exists independently of human beings and no divine will exists independently of human beings" as compared to:
A divine will exists, and exists independently of human beings; and no retrocaused "Law of Nature Concepts" or Laws of Nature exist?
How would that differ in terms of empirical observation from laws of nature and/or a divine will being real and existing independently of human consciousness? I would have thought that if there are no specifiable empirical differences, then the hypothesis you are favoring is firmly within NOMA territory.
Comment by stunney — May 29, 2007 @ 6:19 pm
May 29th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Hi Stunney,
Right now I am going through Sobottka's ideas. If you don't want to talk about that, you will have to wait until I am finished understanding it. I can only handle one philosophical headache at a time.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — May 29, 2007 @ 6:42 pm