Reflectorites
On Sun, 10 Sep 2000 15:18:27 -0500, Chris Cogan wrote:
[continued]
CC>Variations come spewing out and local requirements
>for survival and reproduction "zap" the one's that land in the
>"wrong" places on the "grid" (environment, internal viability,
>reproductive capability, etc.).
See previous post. I have just realised that Chris belatedly defined the
"grid" here. What are "local requirements" that are not covered by
"environment"?
CC>Because these requirements are based on physics, chemistry,
>metabolic requirements, local environmental factors, and so on,
>and because these are lawful factors, they provide the substitute
>for the intelligence lacking in the variation process.
This is just assumed and asserted, not shown. It takes no account of
information, for example.
CC>In effect, the causal orderliness
Chris introduces the word "order" here which is appropriate in the
physical world, but it is inappropriate to describe the particular type of
"specified complexity" found in the living world:
"It is possible to make a more fundamental distinction
between living and nonliving things by examining their
*molecular* structure and *molecular* behavior. In brief, living
organisms are distinguished by their *specified* complexity.*
Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple, well-
specified structures, because they consist of a very large
number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way.
Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples
of structures which are complex but not specified. The crystals
fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; the mixtures
of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity."(Orgel
L.E., "The Origins of Life," 1973, p.189. Emphasis in original.)
CC>of the requirements for survival are "intelligence,"
Again this just assuming what needs to be proved.
This is not "intelligence" because it does not really "select". The
difference in real "intelligence" and unintelligent natural processes is
seen in the following example from a book I bought the other day::
"Given the likelihood of life in other solar systems, intelligent and
otherwise let's consider the possible colonization of the galaxy We
can make the distinction between natural processes and those
directed by intelligence of some sort. Even with no intelligence to
direct it, life can spread throughout the galaxy through naturally
occurring events. The mechanism to propagate life could be
meteors or asteroids that collide with a life-bearing planet, fly off
into space, and subsequently carry the seeds of life to a new planet
in a new solar system. The directions of the meteors are determined
purely by chance, and hence they fly off in random directions.
Instead of traveling from point to point in a straight line, known to
be the most direct route, the propagation of life takes random steps
and eventually wanders away from the planet of origin. This
process, called a random walk, is a rather inefficient mode of travel.
To estimate the time required to travel the length of the galaxy by a
random walk, we can assume that the galaxy is thirty thousand
light-years across, and the step length traveled by a life-carrying
meteor is a few light- years, the typical distance between stars. The
meteors or comets that carry life across the interstellar void travel
at about 30 kilometers per second, the typical random speed of
stars in the galactic disk (this random velocity is superimposed on
the ordered flow of stars around the galactic center). in this
scenario, the time required to randomly populate the galaxy with
life is nearly three trillion years, about three hundred times longer
than the current age of the universe. It is highly unlikely that life has
spread throughout our galaxy through this mode of propagation.
For comparison, the time required t: evolve life spontaneously is
much shorter, about four billion years here on Earth. Given the
relative youth of the universe and the galaxy, spontaneous life
appears to be much more likely than life propagated through
random processes.
The propagation of life throughout the galaxy can also take
place in a directed manner. Suppose that civilizations can produce
transportation with speeds comparable to the meteors discussed
above, about 30 kilometers per second. The travel time between
stars is then about thirty thousand years. Since this time interval
encompasses many generations, at least for humans, we expect that
most of the time bottleneck occurs in the transportation time As a
result, an ambitious civilization can spread out through the galaxy
in an advancing front with a steady speed. The time required to
colonize the entire galaxy in this scenario is approximately the
travel time necessary to cross the galaxy about three hundred
million years. Thus, the estimated time required to colonize the
galaxy is somewhat shorter than the time to evolve intelligent life,
four billion years for the case of Earth. Overlooking the inherent
uncertainties in these estimates, we can summarize the situation
regarding galactic colonization. A capable and purposeful
civilization can in principle colonize the galaxy in about one billion
years. With a random process of propagation, life is likely to
require trillions of-years to spread throughout the galaxy."
(Adams F. & Laughlin G., "The Five Ages of the Universe," 1999,
pp.67-69)
CC>because they select according to consistent "standards,"
What "standards"? This is more smuggling in of qualitative teleological
concepts (see previous post) into what is supposed to be a purposeless
natural process.
Chris should heed the words of Feynman, lest he is fooling himself by
his use of misleading words:
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself-and you
are the easiest person to fool. . So you have to be very careful
about that." (Feynman R.P., "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!",
1990, p.343)
CC>standards that allow (some) orderly variations to
>survive but none that are too disorderly to function or to maintain
>themselves or to reproduce.
See above - "orderly" and "disorderly" are misleading. Chris needs to
discuss life's unique "specified complexity":
"Molecules characterized by specified complexity make up living
things. These molecules are, most notably, DNA and protein. By
contrast, nonliving natural things fall into one of two categories.
They are either unspecified and random (lumps of granite and
mixtures of random nucleotides) or specified but simple
(snowflakes and crystals). A crystal fails to qualify as living because
it lacks complexity. A chain of random nucleotides fails to qualify
because it lacks specificity. No nonliving things (except DNA and
protein in living things, human artifacts and written language) have
specified complexity. For a long time biologists overlooked the
distinction between these two kinds of order (simple, periodic order
versus specified complexity). Only recently have they appreciated
that the distinguishing feature of living systems is not order but
specified complexity. The sequence of nucleotides in DNA or of
amino acids in a protein is not a repetitive order like a crystal.
Instead it is like the letters in a written message... We now know
there is no connection at all between the origin of order and the
origin of specified complexity. There is no connection between
orderly repeating patterns and the specified complexity in protein
and DNA. We cannot draw an analogy, as many have incorrectly
done, between the formation of a crystal and the origin of life. We
cannot argue that since natural forces account for the crystal, they
account for the structure of living things. The order we find in
crystals and snowflakes is not analogous to the specified complexity
we find in living things." (Bradley W.L. & Thaxton C.B.,
"Information & the Origin of Life," in Moreland J.P., ed., "The
Creation Hypothesis," 1994, pp.207-208)
CC>In effect, the organisms we actually
>see *are* designed (in a metaphorical sense) by the systematic
>nature of the selection process.
If they are "designed ...in a metaphorical sense" then they are not
"designed" at all.
But at least Chris realises it is only "in a metaphorical sense". FJ/Pim
seems to think natural `selection' is *real*.
CC>The "system" is not intelligent,
Which seems to contradict what Chris said earlier.
CC>but it is causally ordered, and it does systematically cull out
Again potentially self-deceptive metaphorical language. Unintelligent
systems don't *really* "systematically cull out" anything!
CC>disorderly genomes (often even before they develop a full
>organism to carry them around)
Then they are not "genomes" at all, unless Chris is here talking
about zygotic or embryonic spontaneous abortions.
CC>and many that are orderly but not
>fit for the environment that they happen to be in. The result is that
>organisms *must* have a certain kind of orderliness in order to
survive at
>all.
Apart from Chris using the wrong word "orderly" otherwise
who would disagree?
CC>Scientifically naive people interpret that orderliness as intelligent
>design ...
Chris is here *defining* "Scientifically naive" as those who believe in
"intelligent design". Clearly Behe (for example) is not "Scientifically
naive".
It is the mark of a shaky *ideology* that to survive it has to label
its main rivals as not just wrong, but in some way *defective*. Johnson
in his new book cites the example of how evolutionary naturalists
exhibit the same labelling tactics as Freudians used to:
"Everyone who questions evolutionary naturalism experiences this
patronizing contempt, reminiscent of those disciples of Freud who
used to tell people who challenged Freud's theories that they were
displaying symptoms of `resistance,' the cure for which is
psychoanalysis. " (Johnson P.E., "The Wedge of Truth," 2000,
p.77)
CC>because they don't see it in the context of the vast universe of
>*other* variations that would have occurred if all variations survived and
>were reproduced, nearly *all* of which would be genomes that could not even
>generate a phenotype, let alone reproduce on their own.
It is difficult to know what Chris' point is here. Of course IDers are
aware that viable genomes are a minuscule subset of all possible
genomes. So what?
CC>Perhaps one
>trillionth of one trillionth of one trillionth of all variations would have
>recognizable order, or allow for phenotypes. Maybe more, maybe less. I
>don't really know, and I'm not about to undertake the years of study and
>calculation that would be required to develop a sound calculation to
>determine this.
Chris need not bother. No one would disagree. Chris might be
interested in the Christian geneticist Wilcox's estimate of Genetic Phase
Space for mammals:
"GPS, which is the probability space of all possible genomes, and
thus of all possible genomic coherences, is so large as to be beyond
comprehension, much less prediction. The information content of
GPS is 2^n bits where n is the number of bases. The GPS of genomes
of mammalian size (2.5 billion bases) contains around
10^1,000,000,000 binary bits of information. In contrast, Dawkins's
Biomorph land ... has a probability space of only 10^15. " (Wilcox
D.L., "A Blindfolded Watchmaker: The Arrival of the Fittest", in
Buell J. & Hearn V., eds., "Darwinism: Science or Philosophy?"
1994, p.200)
CC>The point is that we only see orderly organisms because
>only sufficiently orderly organisms have ever been allowed to reproduce to
>provide a basis for further variations, only a tiny percentage of which
>will be both orderly *and* improvements.
Again, apart from the wrong word "orderly" this is such a self-evident
truism that it hardly needs to be stated.
CC>Order and lack of improvement
>would be more common, but, by far the vast majority would be disorderly
and
>harmful. Even neutral variations would lead to disorder in future
>generations for the most part
Now Chris is tossing the teleological "improvement" into the mix (or
should I say mess?).
CC>I'm using the word "order" rather loosely here, because there is ultimately
>no such thing as true disorder. But there can be disorder relative to a
>perspective on order, such as that that we humans tend to develop.
Chris seems to be getting himself more and more tangled up because he
is using words like "`order' rather loosely here"!
CC>And
>there can be basic biological functional order that allows for the use of
>energy, etc., even if the local environment does not happen to "reward" it
>with the option of surviving and reproducing. "Disorder," from this
>perspective, would be genomes or phenotypes that could not even live as
>DNA-based organisms, or that could not live in the kinds of environments we
>consider to be environments for living organisms on Earth. If an organism
>is born with its eyes lodged in its digestive tract, we would consider this
>to be disorderly by an Earth-bound biological perspective. An organism that
>can't see and that can't eat or poop because of where its eyes are will not
>live long.
Chris's argument seems to be degenerating into verbal diarrhoea (or is
it ideas constipation)? Why all this interminable belabouring of the
same *obvious* point?
CC>The order we see in living organisms is due to their *simplicity* in
>certain respects. They have distinguishable features, in other words,
>features that we can see again and again, that can be studied and named. A
>really severely disorderly organism would be a contradiction in terms,
>because it would not be an organism at all. It would not have a digestive
>system, it would not have metabolism, it would not have *any* of the
>distinctive features of living things. A severely disorderly "tree" would
>not have leaves, because the genes that would normally lead to the
>development of leaves would be too broken up (too *disordered*) to
function
>as genes at all. It would have *no* tree features except for being made out
>of matter, and even bare matter forces *some* order (each element has its
>own structure, it interacts with other elements in certain fixed ways and
>not in others, etc.)
See above.
CC>There is ultimately, as I said, no getting away from order. But *life* as
>such requires a certain orderliness as well, above and beyond that of mere
>matter. Survival and reproduction in strenuous environments require yet
>another "layer" of order of a certain type, to the exclusion of order of
>different types.
Indeed, this "order of a certain type" is in fact "specified complexity".
CC>It is unfortunate that the naive
Translation: someone who disagrees fundamentally with Chris!
CC>cannot see the difference
>between evolved order and genuinely intelligent design,
If Chris is talking about the ID movement, then they *can* and in fact
they are developing tools to help others "see the difference between"
what Chris question-beggingly calls "evolved order" (which is really
just unintelligent causes like law and chance) and "genuinely intelligent
design".
CC>but the differences
>permeate life at every level, in residues of evolutionary history, in the
>cumbersome excess complexity of cells, in the migration routes of organisms
>that have extended their migration distances as continents drifted apart
>(and now the distances are too great for a small adjustment to get them out
>of it),
I don't disagree with this overall but only the last explanation seems
false because it has taken millions of years for the continents to drift
apart and if these "organisms" wanted to make "a small adjustment to
get them out of it" they could have done so earlier.
CC>and in the incredibly hodge-podgy nature of all large genomes (and
>probably all small ones as well).
This is a case of one's philosophy dictating one's perception. When I
look at the cell as a whole I see *fantastic* design, and even
materialists like Francis Crick can't help noticing it too, but sternly tell
themselves to ignore it:
"Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not
designed, but rather evolved. "(Crick F.H.C., "What Mad Pursuit,"
1990, p.138)
CC>None of these are conclusive against
>design, but they *do* count against it,
Chris has been illegitimately using design words all throughout his
argument and now he concludes that it does "count against it"! If he
described things with terms appropriate to his purposeless materialist
philosophy, he would see the true contrast between his view of what
the world *should* be and what it actually *is*.
CC>and they *do* count *for*
>naturalistic, opportunistic, catch-as-catch-can evolution.
If that is the case, Chris needs to go back and revise his argument,
taking out all the qualitative language of conscious purpose that he
smuggled in like: "best", "better", "correct", "right", "good", "needed",
and "value", and substitute the purposeless language of "naturalistic,
opportunistic, catch-as-catch-can evolution"!
CC>We can predict,
>on the basis of evolutionary theory that organisms that have evolved
>through a long period of time through a wide range of environments
and
>survival requirements will have these "design" flaws.
Note how Chris begs the question by putting "design" in quotes. That a
system has "flaws" does not make it not designed. Windows 2000 has
design flaws but that does not make it not designed (although some
would say that is a bad example! :-))
The fact is no such "prediction". *Both* "evolutionary theory" and
Design theory (i.e. not ID) arose in a world that has so-called "`design'
flaws".
Indeed Paley in 1802, writing well before Darwin and in fact before the
first truly "evolutionary theory" Larmarck's Philosophie Zoologique of
1809, pointed out that design that less than perfection was no
disqualification of design:
"Neither, secondly, would it invalidate out conclusion, that the watch
sometimes went wrong, or that it seldom went exactly right. The
purpose of the machinery, the design, and the designer, might be
evident, and in the case supposed would be evident, in whatever
way we accounted for the irregularity of the movement, or whether
we could account for it or not. It is not necessary that a machine be
perfect, in order to shew with what design it was made: still less
necessary, where the only question is, whether it were made with
any design at all."
and
"When we are inquiring simply after the existence of an intelligent
Creator, imperfection, inaccuracy, liability to disorder, occasional
irregularities, may subsist, in a considerable degree, without inducing
any doubt into the question: just as a watch may frequently go wrong,
seldom perhaps exactly right, may be faulty in some parts, defective in
some, without the smallest ground of suspicion from thence arising,
that it was not a watch; not made; or not made for the purpose ascribed to
it."
(Paley W., "Natural Theology," [1802], 1972, reprint, pp.3-4,41)
*Both* "evolutionary theory" and Design theory can explain these so-
called "`design' flaws'. For example "evolutionary theory" can explain
them as the result of a "organisms that have evolved through a long
period of time through a wide range of environments and survival
requirements".
But Design can explain it *exactly* the same way. If a Designer is
going to ensure that His designs can survive for "a long period of time
through a wide range of environments", He could realise His design
through "a long period of time" and would build in the redundancy and
adjustment mechanisms to ensure they could.
Chris' problem is he is confusing design with YEC.
There is no requirement in Design Theory for a Designer to create
perfect designs. Indeed perfect designs would be *bad* design in the
context of an ecosystem, because any organism which was perfect
would be detrimental to the whole ecosystem:
"According to creationists, God is the Creator not only of
individual kinds of organisms but of entire ecosystems as well. This
may require not perfect efficiency on the part of a given species, but
maximal efficiency. That is, an organism's efficiency of survival
must be balanced with other organisms and factors in the
ecosystem. If a given organism were perfectly efficient, then the
rest of the ecosystem would go wildly out of balance. So the
various organisms in an ecosystem may have an efficiency that
represents a compromise with other factors in that ecosystem so as
to obtain an optimal balance." (Moreland J.P., ed., "The Creation
Hypothesis," 1994, p.296)
In fact perfect design would create logical impossibilities in an
ecological system: Imagine a perfect lion running at the speed of light
after a gazelle which could also run at the speed of light!
Just as a human engineer can build imperfection into his designs for
other design goals (e.g. biodegradable plastic rubbish bags, planned
obsolescence in cars, etc), or as a trade-off (e.g. as in a tank with
thinner armour as a trade-off for speed or fuel economy), so a perfect
Designer can design things that are less than perfect.
In fact, as real engineers do not aim for perfect design but "the best
compromise...between conflicting objectives":
"No real designer attempts optimality in the sense of attaining
perfect design Indeed there is no such thing as perfect design. Real
designers strive for constrained optimization, which is something
completely different. As Henry Petroski aptly remarks in Invention
by Design, "All design involves conflicting objectives and hence
compromise, and the best designs will always be those that come up
with the best compromise." Constrained optimization is the art of
compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is
all about. To find fault with biological design because it misses an
idealized optimum, as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does, is
therefore gratuitous. Not knowing the objectives of the designer,
Gould is in no position to say whether the designer has come up
with a faulty compromise among those objectives." (Dembski
W.A., "Intelligent Design, 1999, p.261)
Indeed it is my personal claim that a perfect Designer cannot in fact
make anything else but imperfect designs. A perfect Designer making
truly perfect designs would in fact be a logical impossibility of the same
sort as God making a rock so heavy He cannot lift it. Christian
theology (for example) has always recognised there are limits to God's
power in the areas of logical impossibilities (God cannot make a square
circle) and self-contradictions (i.e. God cannot lie, etc.)
But while an intelligent Designer (even a perfect one like the Christian
God) can make less than perfect designs, it does not follow that
unintelligent natural processes can make perfect (or even near perfect)
designs. For example, the co-founder of Darwinian evolutionary
theory, Wallace, who was, in Gould's words "an ardent selectionist
who far out-Darwined Darwin in his rigid insistence on natural
selection as the sole directing force for evolutionary change", gave up
on Darwinism when he realised there were in fact some things in nature
(like the human brain) which vastly exceeded what unintelliegnt natural
processes could be expecteed to make:
"Second Corollary-Too Much Perfection. Darwin formulated this
himself in the first edition of The Origin of Species: `Natural
selection tends only to make each being as perfect as, or slightly
more perfect than, the other inhabitants of the same area.' Eiseley
reports that in 1869, after only ten years, it was brushed aside by no
less a person than Alfred Russel Wallace, co-inventor with Darwin
of the doctrine of natural selection. Perceiving that the gap between
the brain of the ape and that of the lowest savage was too big,
Wallace announced a heresy: "An instrument has been developed in
advance of the needs of its possessor." He challenged the whole
Darwinian position by insisting that artistic, mathematical, and
musical abilities could not be explained on the basis of natural
selection and the struggle for existence. Something else, he
contended, some unknown spiritual element, must have been at
work in the elaboration of the human brain." (Macbeth N., "Darwin
Retried," 1971, pp.102-103)
CC>We cannot predict, on
>the basis of the design premise (especially the *intelligent* design
>premise)
If Chris is here referring to ID (as in the modern Intelligent Design
movement) it does not make any claims about whether the design was
perfect:
"Intelligent design needs to be distinguished from apparent design on
the one hand and optimal design on the other. Apparent design looks
designed but really isn't. Optimal design is perfect design and hence
cannot exist except in an idealized realm (sometimes called a "Platonic
heaven"). Apparent and optimal design empty design of all practical
significance. A common strategy of opponents to design, like Stephen
Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins, is to assimilate intelligent design to one
of these categories-apparent or optimal design. The problem with this
move is that it is an evasion. Indeed it utterly sidesteps the question of
intelligent design. The automobiles that roll off the assembly plants in
Detroit are intelligently designed in the sense that human intelligences
are responsible for them. Nevertheless even if we think Detroit
manufactures the best cars in the world, it would still be wrong to say
they are optimally designed. Nor is it correct to say they are only
apparently designed. Within biology intelligent design holds that a
designing intelligence is indispensable for explaining the specified
complexity of living systems. Nevertheless, taken strictly as a scientific
theory, intelligent design refuses to speculate about the nature of this
designing intelligence. Whereas optimal design demands a perfectionistic
designer who has to get everything just right, intelligent design fits our
ordinary experience of design, which is always conditioned by the needs
of a situation and therefore always falls short of some idealized global
optimum." (Dembski W.A., "Intelligent Design," 1999, p.261)
CC>that these things would be found.
Not so. See above. The fact is that Design can explain imperfection but
unintelligent causes have problems explaining what MacBeth called
"too much perfection".
[continued]
Steve
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Warwick 6024 -> *_,--\_/ Phone: +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, Western Australia v "Test everything." (1 Thess. 5:21)
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