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Darwinism from an informatics point of view

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progflowAs everyone knows, life in all its countless instances (organisms) involves internal instructions, as well as processors that run them. Without these instructions, no organism would be able to originate in the first place, let alone develop or survive. The discovery of these instructions – contained in DNA/RNA macromolecules and the molecular machinery that reads and writes them in biological cells – has been hailed as one of the greatest theoretical and experimental breakthroughs of the 20th century. The ID movement claims that these scientific findings have only served to highlight the weaknesses and inconsistencies of the neo-Darwinian theory of macro-evolution, according to which all species have evolved from a common ancestor, as a result of random mutation and natural selection.

The discovery of complex information processing in biology invites the question of whether there are any significant similarities between bio-informatics and the artificial informatics of computers, i.e. so-called computer science. Given that in both fields information has to be managed and processed, some similarities must of course exist. In this post, I will attempt to outline some conclusions on this topic, which lead us inexorably to the conclusion that Darwinian theory is incapable in principle of explaining the mystery of the origin of life and of species, as it claims to do.

When we consider the development of organisms and their complex internal organs and biological systems, we can easily see that these developmental sequences – and here I am talking about both ontogenetic and phylogenetic sequences – must involve complex programs, which embody decision logic about what has to be assembled, and also when and where it should be assembled. In other words, the right things need to be put in the right place at the right time, according to a precise schedule which is in some respects even more rigorous than schedules used in human engineering. For example, the development of an embryo is a process whose countless steps need to be choreographed in their most minute details by a program that is oriented towards the final result. Any error in the execution of this program may have severely deleterious consequences. The same thing can be said regarding the alleged macroevolution of new kinds of organs or even new body plans.

Given that biology and informatics both make use of programs, it will be necessary for me to say a few things about computer programming, in order to explain as clearly as possible exactly what a program is. I know that a lot of UD readers are software developers, so the points I will be making below will be very obvious to them. However, I’ll have to ask them to bear with me, as some of our readers are laypeople in these fields.

In order to process information – i.e. create software – it is necessary to create data and programs. Data is passive information: it cannot change or decide anything by itself. For example, let’s say I have a string variable (called $a) and I set it to contain the value “something” – or maybe I have a numeric variable $b which I set to contain the value 3.14. In these cases, I am neither specifying what should be done with the set values, nor when it should be done. Hence if I were to confine my work as a programmer to simply declaring the values of passive data, I would never be able to actively run a program or control any of its processes. Putting it another way: a program, in its simplest concept, is a blueprint specifying the reiteration of basic decision structures, about what to do and when to do it. A program must specify conditions and actions forming a control structure:

conditions (when to do it)
{

actions (what to do)

}

In other words, a program is active information. Since it determines conditions and actions, it has to be able to decide and organize things, and it also has to be able to create and change data. A program implies a decision hierarchy – in a word, a “logic”. It states what to do, when certain particular conditions arise. Once a program is designed, its execution by a processor can be used to control data and processes of any kind.

The simple structure described above can be repeated many times and can also be nested to create very complex structures with multiple nesting layers, such as the following example, with three nesting levels (the indentations and carriage returns have been inserted to help the reader understand the program flow, but are irrelevant per se at the level of machine code):

conditions
{

actions
conditions;
{

actions;
conditions;
{

actions;
conditions;
{

actions;

}

}

}

}

Another important concept of programming is that of the sub-function or sub-routine:

function
{

}

The main program can reference and run a sub-function as follows:

conditions
{

actions
&function

}

where “&” is the symbol for referencing.

A sub-routine is a sub-program (or “child” program) of the parent program (usually called “main”) that invokes it, which can be referenced (i.e. used indirectly, thanks to a pointer that points to it). Two important things to note about sub-functions are that they work only if they exist somewhere within the software (a very obvious point) and that they are “called” by the main program. In other words, even if we have entire libraries of sub-functions, they will be useless if they are never called: they will be “dormant software”. Thus in a sense, dormant sub-functions constitute passive information. They are passive because they still require a caller that can run them. A sub-function which is never called does absolutely nothing.

From another point of view, programming can be defined as whatever implements control of a process. Since – as Michel Behe says – the fundamental problem of biochemistry and molecular biology (and, in the final analysis, of systems biology) is the problem of control, it follows that programming is indispensable in biology, where countless complex and concurrent processes are involved. Because multiple processes are running at the same time in biological systems – a property that scientists refer to as concurrency – there must be some higher level of direction that governs them all.

It should be noted that the conclusions obtained above hold quite independently of whether an organism’s biological instructions are completely contained within its genome, or only partially. There are many (and I would count myself among them) who suspect that the genome, by itself, does not contain enough information to account for the overall biological complexity of an organism. However one thing is certain: the assembly instructions of living beings must exist somewhere, and the science of generating instructions (computer science) can help us understand their organization and fabrication.

Modern evolutionary theory proposes several unguided mechanisms in order to explain the alleged global macroevolution of species from a single common ancestor: random genetic mutations, sexual genetic recombination, horizontal gene transfer, gene duplication, genetic drift, and so on. According to evolutionary theory, the output of all of these blind processes is subsequently processed (or filtered) by natural selection, which allows only the fittest to survive and reproduce. However, as we will see below, not one of these processes is capable of generating programs. Hence they are also incapable of creating new organs, new body plans, or even new species.

The concept of the gene is fundamental to evolutionary theory in particular, and to genetics and biology in general. Despite its importance, we are still a long way from a clear definition of what a gene is. From the old definition of “recipe for a protein” to the new definition of “functional unit of the genome,” the concept of gene has evolved to the point where some researchers now openly declare that “a gene is a unit of both structure and function, whose exact meaning and boundaries are defined by the scientist in relation to the experiment he or she is doing.” In practice, this means that a gene is whatever a particular scientist has in mind when he/she is doing a particular experiment.

The argument which I am putting forward here cuts through these definitional controversies, because from my informatics-based perspective there are really only two possibilities, which can be summarized as follows: either (a) genes are data (which corresponds to the above old definition of a gene); or (b) genes are functions (which corresponds to the new definition). The key point to understand here is that the development of new organs or body-plans (macroevolution) necessarily involves new decision logic, i.e. new hierarchies of nested control structures. Specifically, the architectural complexity (at the system level) of new organs or body-plans and their embryogenesis involves assembly instructions which require advanced-level control, and hence advanced programming.

Let’s suppose that the first option is correct, and that genes are data. In this case, it can easily be demonstrated that point random mutations, sexual recombination, horizontal gene transfer and data duplication are all incapable of creating the hierarchical decision logic of the main program. In fact, data is what the main program elaborates. Data is passive, while the program is active. What is passive cannot create what is active. This is just as true for intelligently designed data as it is for the data upon which the random operations of Darwinian evolution are applied.

We can illustrate this point from another perspective, by using the analogy of the bricks in a building. If genes are data containing only “recipes for proteins,” and proteins are the “bricks” of the organism “building,” then it is obvious that genes/bricks (and the random Darwinian operations performed upon them) cannot account for the construction and assembly of the organism/building – that is, the set of rules and instructions specifying the way in which the various bricks have to assemble together, in order to yield the unity of a complete system. The building construction metaphor also helps us understand why different organisms can have almost the same genetic patrimony. Just as the same bricks can be used to construct entirely different buildings, the same genes can be used to develop entirely different organisms. In other words, in both biology and architecture, what matters are not the basic building blocks, but rather the higher-level instructions which operate upon them.

Now let’s consider the second alternative, which is that genes are equivalent to software sub-functions. This is quite a generous assumption for evolutionists to make, because it implies that genes possess their own internal decision logic, without explaining how they acquired it. In reality, the so-called “regulatory regions” of genes probably don’t warrant being described as true algorithms. But even if genes were the equivalent of software functions, then once again, random mutations, sexual recombination, horizontal gene transfer and duplication of functions would still be incapable of creating hierarchical decision logic. Why not? Because the decision logic contained in the main program is what invokes the functions (by referencing them). Just as a hammer or a drill cannot create a carpenter, the above operations on functions are incapable of creating their user.

Let us note in passing that the classic evolutionist objection that a mutation involving only a few bits (or even a single bit) is capable of triggering major changes (evolutionists typically cite homeobox genes that control some configurations of the body plan, etc.) contains another misunderstanding. For the active information for these changes still has to exist somewhere, and it must be as large as the changes require it to be. It is true that a programmer can write a very short “wrapper program” to trigger large changes, but that doesn’t mean that the changes themselves require only a little information to specify. For example, I can write a short piece of code which I choose to run on my computer – say, a word processor or a chess program. This code is a few bits long, but the word processor and the chess program are really large programs. All the function does is point to or reference them. However, the function doesn’t create the active information contained in the word processor or chess program software; rather, it simply switches control between the two. Hence there is no free-lunch creation of information whatsoever here.

Leaving aside the problems associated with defining what a gene is, it can still be shown that the random processes which evolutionary theory claims are capable of generating biological complexity, simply don’t work. They don’t work because they are, by their very nature, incapable of generating the top-down functional hierarchy of nested decision structures that is responsible for making the whole system. Since this objection to the adequacy of random processes is an in-principle objection, it is useless for evolutionists to attempt to counter it by resorting to vast amounts of time or huge probabilistic resources. The fundamental problem of Darwinism is that the greater cannot come from the less.

To sum up: Darwinism, from an informatics point of view, has absolutely zero credibility. This explains, among other things, why so many computer programmers who are interested in the ID/evolution debate are on the ID side. In their own job they have never seen a single bit of software arise gratis. Rather they have to create, bit by bit, the active information of the software applications they develop. These people are justifiably perplexed when they encounter the evolutionist claim that God did not have to write a single line of code, because biological complexity (which is far greater than any computer software) arose naturalistically. “Why no work for Him and so much work for me?” they may ask. In this post, I hope I have helped explain that God, also in this case, expects far less from us than what He Himself did and does.

Comments
Zachriel #176, Hilarious!EugeneS
January 19, 2015
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EugeneS: This is not to say NS can’t do anything. But it has limitations: it is not only the fittest who survive. It is rather, the demise of the absolute no-hopers, not the survival of the fittest. Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein were taking a walk in the woods, vigorously debating the philosophical underpinnings of quantum theory, when a gigantic bear suddenly burst out of the underbrush and raced toward them. Bohr immediately whipped out his fine running shoes and began lacing them up. Einstein, furrowing his brow at Bohr, said: "Niels, there's no way you can outrun that bear." "That's true, dear Albert," Bohr calmly replied, "but I don't need to outrun the bear. I only need to outrun you."Zachriel
January 16, 2015
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Zachriel, Then you should know that GAs are written for a particular purpose for a particular problem. There is no 'just GA'. A lot of tinkering on the part of the programmer is involved. It is no magic. GA has an explicit objective function to minimize. A set of neighbourhood operators is available, you as a programmer can devise new ones fit for the problem and vary the structure of the neighborhood, you exercise control over how you create the next generation and how the following populations are bred. In nature it is not like that. The question is how sensitive it is. The filter of NS is much cruder than what a human expert can entertain. I admit it could be my writing, but I never suggested NS was impossible or infeasible. I am afraid, you slightly misinterpreted me. I said that human experts, unlike nature, do have that ability to detect the slightest change towards the desirable. This is not to say NS can't do anything. But it has limitations: it is not only the fittest who survive. It is rather, the demise of the absolute no-hopers, not the survival of the fittest. As a separate point, though, again the question of context arises here. NS is only able to act in a specific information processing context of a biological system.EugeneS
January 16, 2015
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EugeneS: The point is, de-novo organization cannot appear by Darwinian means. That's a different question than what you argued, which concerned the ability for natural selection to work on gradients.Zachriel
January 16, 2015
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EugeneS: Did you write a single GA yourself Yes. EugeneS: I said natural selection is nowhere near what is necessary for organization to appear de-novo. Period. I did not say natural selection did not exist. You said, "Human breeders, unlike nature, do have that ability to detect the slightest change towards the desirable." It turns out that gradual change is also available to natural selection.Zachriel
January 16, 2015
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Apart from that, a Darwinian model is one thing, what happens in practice is another. The point is, de-novo organization cannot appear by Darwinian means.EugeneS
January 16, 2015
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Zachriel #169, "reasonably well" Please be more specific. Did you write a single GA yourself or at least use one in practice to get a solution to a practical industrial problem? "similar feedback must be available" Please be more careful. I said natural selection is nowhere near what is necessary for organization to appear de-novo. Period. I did not say natural selection did not exist. "not sure why you say that" Please refer to the literature. I gave a reference for a start.EugeneS
January 16, 2015
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EugeneS: From my experience, I can say they require a lot of tuning before they can be of any worth. Not sure why you say that. For 'rational' landscapes, generic algorithms typically work reasonably well. EugeneS: Human breeders, unlike nature, do have that ability to detect the slightest change towards the desirable. For natural selection to work, a similar feedback must be available. There's ample evidence of such feedbacks in nature.Zachriel
January 16, 2015
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Toronto #166, Yes, by all means.EugeneS
January 16, 2015
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I wonder if the interlocutors advocating for the unlimited creative power of GAs have developed a single genetic algorithm themselves. I mean in earnest, in practice. From my experience, I can say they require a lot of tuning before they can be of any worth. This is usually glossed over. However, it is this tuning that imparts all the information necessary for sensible behaviour. GAs are really based on expert knowledge about the distribution of solutions in the state space for a particular problem domain. Below is a reference to a nice paper dealing with a similar GA claim.
"Climbing the Steiner Tree--Sources of Active Information in a Genetic Algorithm for Solving the Euclidean Steiner Tree Problem" Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Robert J. Marks II http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2012.1
GA is a model of artificial selection, not a blind search or natural selection, for a number of reasons. GA is active, natural selection is not. GA almost always has an explicit fitness function and exercises active control over where the sequence of states should be heading to. This is achieved by measuring the difference between the actual and the desired and making decisions to direct search based on this information. Human breeders, unlike nature, do have that ability to detect the slightest change towards the desirable. So GA is really a model of how they operate, not how nature behaves. All nature has is a very coarse filter which has absolutely nothing active about it. It is a passive culler. To claim you can get de-novo organization (control, scheduling, agents using common memory and communicating etc) by just culling coupled with random variation, requires a leap of faith.EugeneS
January 16, 2015
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StephenB @ 160,
But, of course, such a discussion would be possible only with someone who can present and follow reasoned arguments.
It is June 1 @ 12:48 PM and I would love to present an argument.Toronto
June 1, 2010
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I think what may be interesting, would be an open blog where I would allow both sides to present OP's and to battle it out head to head. If enough of you are interested in contributing, let me know and I'll set one up.Toronto
June 1, 2010
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Amazing.kairosfocus
June 1, 2010
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above @160, yes, of course. Thank you for catching that.StephenB
May 31, 2010
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@Stephen Forth line from the end... Did you mean to say 'personal' rather than 'impersonal'?above
May 31, 2010
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So according to Toronto nature is God's peer... What exactly is the difference between paganism and atheism again? It's getting increasingly difficult to differentiate between the two lately...above
May 31, 2010
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StephenB @ 160,
No answer.
That is an unfair thing to say to those of us on the moderation queue, who can't respond in a timely fashion. I have to carefully choose what I invest time in replying to since there is no guarantee that anyone will see it. I also see that you have already made your closing statements to the jury and would thus like to thank you for the discussion.Toronto
May 31, 2010
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I should take time out to explain to the poor readers who are trying to follow Toronto’s non-reasoning overtures what exactly he has been doing. Recall that I presented several attributes that a first cause must possess. I didn’t go through the proof for each one because I knew that Toronto would simply ignore them. So, I explained only one attribute and why it is necessary. The physical universe, that is, all of empirical reality, is changing. Anything that changes must be changed by something else. Nothing can cause its own change. Thus, a pan of water cannot change itself from cold to hot. The change must come from the outside, meaning that the heat from the range top causes the water to change from cold to hot. Anything that changes is changed by something else. That chain cannot go on indefinitely. Hence, we come to the causeless cause, which is unchanging and unchangeable. If it could change, that would mean that something else was causing the change and it would not be a first cause. Among some of the other attributes required by first cause, we could list the following: The first cause must have 1) An intellect and a will, 2) It must have the capacity to create or not create, 3) It must be eternal, 4) and it must be immaterial. Toronto did not, at first, contest the point that these attributes are necessary for a first cause. Quite the contrary, @106 he claims that because his “nature” is a “peer” of “God,” nature can do anything that God can do. ---As he puts it, “Why can you have an uncaused first cause, (i.e., God), and I can’t?” Notice, by the way, that he introduces religion into the discussion for the first time. I said nothing about God. More important, he introduces the concept of a “peer to peer” relationship. ---“In that case, if my first cause is in any way lacking the required capabilities, then yours is lacking in the same way. Got that? If his first cause lacks ANYTHING, then my first cause must also lack those qualities. And again, he asserts: ---“Since I’ve said that my first cause, we’ll call it “Nature”, is a peer of your first cause “God”, you must use it as I’ve defined it in order to contest any point I make. It is on that basis that I asked Toronto to confirm that his “nature,” as he defined it, contained all the qualities, capacities, and attributes of a first cause. It his nature does not have the same attributes as my “first cause,” it doesn’t qualify as a peer. That should be obvious. Remember, that Toronto called the first cause God and said “nature,” his first cause, can do "anything that God can do." So, I asked the obvious questions: “Does your “nature” have all the attributes that would enable it to do anything that God can do. Does it have an intellect and a will? Does it have the capacity to decide whether to create or not create? Is your nature omnipotentent and omniscient? Is your nature an eternal, unchanging, non-material pure spirit? Does your nature integrate into one person the qualities of truth, life, goodness, beauty, and love ? Does your nature have the capacity to love its creatures? Can your “nature” take the form of a human and become a sacrificial lamb? No answer. Not only does he completely ignore the questions, indicating that he does not mean what he says, he begins his campaign to change the definition of “peer” from equal to not equal. ---“A “peer” to X is something that operates at the same “level” as X not because it appears to be identical to X in operation.” Notice how the term “peer” is getting downgraded to something that “operates at the same level,” whatever that means. ---“My designer is a peer of yours and is under no obligation to tell either of us why he created life if he was actually even conscious in the same way we are.” So now his “designer,” can do all the things my first cause can do even though it has none of the attributes necessary to do them. Incredible. This is classic Darwinism. [The denial of causality] He confuses the issue further by saying, ---- “Your list is simply a set of human-like attributes you have mapped onto your designer.” Notice now that Toronto disputes the fact that attributes are necessary at all. At the same time, he will not address my substantive arguments indicating that they are, indeed, necessary. —“What you have done is to suggest that because I don’t believe the designer exhibits the human-like qualities in your list, then my designer is not a peer of your designer.” The morphing argument continues: Now, suddenly, the attributes for a first cause, which he first argued can be found in “nature” by calling nature a “peer” of the first cause, and then later claimed are not present in nature at all, have finally been downgraded to the level of “human-like” qualities. Then, we get this: ---“The serial port driver and the Ethernet driver work entirely differently despite providing the same service to the upper levels of the protocol stack.” How nice. What does that have to do with the argument about FIRST causes? ---“The only characteristic they share is the use of electricity and yet they are peers of one another, just like our respective designers are.” A "peer" first cause cannot have the luxury of not having first cause characteristics. Then, we get this: —“If a Muslim doesn’t answer all the questions in your list the way you believe, does that mean that Islam is not to be considered a peer of Christianity? —“We are talking about the power to create life, not issues of worship.” So, he injects religion into the discussion yet a second time, while reminding me that we should not be talking about “worship.” Remarkable. —”With your definition of cause, a straw could not break a camel’s back since it does not have the required mass.” I asked him what he understands my definition of a cause to be. No answer. Then we get this: ---“Here you are @ 128 introducing religion, ---“Can your “nature” take the form of a human and become a sacrificial lamb? ---“unless I am mistaken and this is not a reference to Jesus.” Obviously, this is an untrue statement. He introduced the subject of religion on two occasions [as I pointed out earlier] and insisted that his nature can do anything the GOD can do. I had said nothing about God. So, naturally I am following up on yet another of his claims for which he will not hold himself accountable, namely that nature can do anything that GOD can do [his words, not mine]. Then, as a special bonus, after having introduced religion into the discussion, he justifies his unwillingness to answer all my question, saying that he will not answer religious questions. Unbelievable. Finally, he sums up his long record of non-responses with this incredible statement: --- “This is in keeping with the spirit of ID as being a scientific endeavour and not one of theology.” Would it be worthwhile to explain to Toronto the difference between metaphysics and physics? Do you suppose he could grasp it? Would it help if I pointed out again that all the religious references came from him and all my answers that contained a religious element were responses to his religious questions? Probably not. Notice also that anyone with even a modicum of intellectual curiosity would have avoided all these obfuscations and tried to confront my one specified argument. Since everything in nature is changing, and since nothing can change itself, the first cause must be unchangeable. Then, I could have gone on to explain WHY the first cause must also be impersonal, eternal, etc. But, of course, such a discussion would be possible only with someone who can present and follow reasoned arguments.StephenB
May 31, 2010
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niwrad, I have nothing to add, but I thank you very much for your reply, which I'll be mulling over.nullasalus
May 31, 2010
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kairosfocus @ 155,
If little bangs have causes, why then is it argued — apart form metaphysical biases and preferences — that big bangs do not have causes? –G
I agree with you on this statement. The only difference between StephenB's and my position, is that he believes the first cause must have all the qualities and motives he ascribes to his vision of God, while I believe that in this debate, the only thing of concern is the designer's ability to create life. Whether the designer is still around and has been joined by other beings, or has simply disappeared, or is content to just observe, is besides the point. Whatever caused the universe, clearly "did" cause the universe, but whatever form it presents to us now, if any, is irrelevant to that first act.Toronto
May 31, 2010
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Tim @ 153,
I know next to zip about programming, but one thing seems to stand out in the whole data/instruction debate, and I’d say niwrad has the upper hand. Consider the most advanced chess playing programs. I’d bet that they could be written in some of that fancy code where what is data and what is program seems obscure.
Yes, that line between DATA and CODE is not as fixed as niwrad wants it to be. While you say you know zip about programming, your intuition in this case, which is not too far off the mark, is pulling you to my side of the debate.Toronto
May 31, 2010
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Nullasalus #152 Good questions.
What is meant by the claim that nature is blind?
Nature (the universal existence) has not in itself its own principle. It depends totally on the Being. Being has intelligence and knowledge. Therefore to be "blind" applied to nature is a metaphor for not to be intelligent and not to know per se (eyesight is a traditional symbol of knowledge and the ability to know).
Is this a scientific claim, or a purely philosophical one? And if scientific, how can it be tested?
It is a metaphysical claim. As such it can be known directly by mean of universal intellect. Reason, which is a by-product of intellect and an individual indirect faculty of knowledge, when is honest, can only agree at its level. Science, which is based on reason (and experiments), when is unbiased, can agree too. In this case we can say that such metaphysical claim becomes also a scientific claim. If for scientific test we mean all processes where reason (and eventually experiments) are involved to investigate nature, then in a sense the claim is scientifically testable (admitted that reason doesn’t turn against intellect).
How in the world can we tell if these [evolutionary] mechanisms are guided or not? How can we tell whether or not they were implemented knowingly by a designer?
If we were sure that biological macroevolution from a common ancestor happened (and we are not), we would be sure that its evolutionary mechanisms were guided and implemented knowingly by a designer. In fact if life implies information technology (IT) and advanced engineering (AE) to greater reason macroevolution is an IT&AE problem raised to the n-th power. ID theory proves that just IT&AE implies CSI, then intelligence. If macroevolution happened it was certainly driven by intelligence because an IT&AE^n problem is far beyond chance and necessity.niwrad
May 31, 2010
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PS: Wiki lets its neutrality mask slip at the end of its causality article, allowing us a peek into the exact self-referentially absurd attempt to deny causality that SB has highlighted, also revealing astonishing ignorance of the issue of the existence of a continent, evidently finite past duration observed cosmos entailing the existence of a necessary being as its causal ground [debates are on what that necessary being is, not its reality]: >>1. If the Universe has caused things to happen, what have caused the cause? Nobody/Nothing. This is logically acceptable. 2. When did the cause of the first cause take place? The only acceptable answer would be: Never. From this follows that if the cause of the first cause never took place then there can be no cause. Since if the cause was caused in some specific time, then we can no longer think of the universe as eternal. Eternity implies no start and no end. The solution to this problem does not lie in God having caused the cause, since then we would need to ask the same question concerning God. Therefore we must understand that the only logical explanation is that cause and effect are "appearances of the senses" which humans as limited beings in time and space experience, but from an eternal point of view nothing really happens, thus the Universe is void of cause and thus of effect. The Universe just IS."[5 -- i.e Sowa 2000] >> 1 --> The logic of cause-effect bonds entails that in a world where contingent beings exist and the observed world as a whole is contingent, two classes of being are possible: contingent ones that have a beginning and may go out of existence, and necessary ones that do not have a beginning nor can they have an end. 2 --> Unsurprisingly, Wiki misrepresents the Cosmological argument. In a simple form, that is more properly:
1. Some contingent beings exist. (E.g.: us, a tree or a fruit, an artifact, the planets and stars, etc. -- anything that might not have existed, i.e. is caused.) 2. Contingent beings do not exist by themselves – that is in part what “contingent” means - so they require a necessary being as their ultimate cause. 3. If any contingent being exists, then a necessary being exists. 4. Thus, there exists a necessary being, the ultimate cause of the existence of the many contingent beings in the cosmos.
3 --> The logic here is that there are commonly encountered things whose existence points beyond themselves to their causes. In a world of such caused entities, we face the issue of something that underlies and grounds the existence of such a world, i.e by necessity something that is not part of a chain of caused beings. 4 --> Formerly, this was believed by materialists to be an eternal universe of matter in some form. But the demise of the Steady State universe theory has led tot he loss of scientific grounds, even as the rise of the Big Bang cosmology points to a universe we observe with a strictly finite duration from the singularity, usually estimated at 13.7 BYA. 5 --> Little bangs have little bangers and big bangs, logically, should have much the same. Unless, we are prepared to assert that things can come into being out of nothing -- no time, no space, no energy, no matter, no agency etc -- for no reason under no forces acting. (On what evidence?) 6 --> The patent counter-intuitiveness [or is it outright absurdity?] of and utter want of evidence for this has led to the rise of much speculation about multiverses and oscillating universes [which last have been killed off for now yet again by the discovery of flatness in the observed universe]. 7 --> For instance we hear much about quantum fluctuations or occasionally about oscillating closely aligned parallel branes -- which imply an assumed underlying stratum that is in effect eternal. 8 --> In short, trace the cause-effect chain long enough and ask what must underlie and support it, and we see that there is something that is implicit under the chain. Ultimately, something that is implicitly or explicitly eternal. (And notice, we are not here discussing the first in a claimed infinite successive chain [which courtesy Hilbert's hotel runs into the most patent absurdities itself], but the ground on which the chain rests, as did Aquinas et al, ever so long ago. And, on our observation and reasonable inferences therefrom, the chain of successive events in our observed universe has a terminus 10 - 20 BYA, even on the conventional timelines.) 9 --> God, if he is, is just such a necessary and eternal being, so the question "who caused God" posed above is absurd on its face. 10 --> The sufficient explanation for a being with a beginning is its cause; for a necessary being, it is its essential nature AND its necessitation on the logic of cause in not only the successive sense but the sense of grounding a chain of cause-effect bonds. 11 --> The onward blatant attempt to deny the fact of cause by Sowa, as cited, brings to mind the saying that one may debate explanations but one does not dispute facts:
1: Get two boxes of ordinary safety matches. 2: open one and strike a match against the strip, observing the flame: heat + Fuel + air --> Fire, a combustion process. 3: Sweep a second match in the air next to the strike strip. No flame as no heat. 4: Try striking the match under water (or in a tank of non-oxidising gas like Nitrogen or Carbon Dioxide): friction is still tere but no flame as air is removed. 5: Get the second match box out and strike it, getting it to burn a bit. Tilt up so the match tries to burn the already burned part, The flame fgoes out. 6: So, we see that the fuel, heat and air are each necessary for and are jointly sufficient to initiate and then support a fire, per mechanical necessity. Cause-effect by factual example. 7: In the wider context we see that someone decides to strike the match under set circumstances, and does so for a purpose, so we see intelligent purposeful cause in action in a simple scientific context. But in principle an accident could make the strike happen. 8: we also observe that effects are initiated and sustained by causes, that some are necessary, that others are sufficient, that accidents may act and that agents may act. (The existence of a crime of arson shows that we can credibly distinguish the two.)
___________________ So, again, if we are in a meeting hall and a BANG happens, every head will turn to see what caused the little bang [especially here in M'rat]. It is credible that we have had a big bang, at least on scientific evidence and reasonings. If little bangs have causes, why then is it argued -- apart form metaphysical biases and preferences -- that big bangs do not have causes? --Gkairosfocus
May 31, 2010
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F/N: A little bit of grounding, courtesy Merriam-Webster: _____________________ >> Main Entry: 1cause Pronunciation: \?ko?z\ Function: noun Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin causa Date: 13th century 1 a : a reason for an action or condition : motive b : something that brings about an effect or a result c : a person or thing that is the occasion of an action or state; especially : an agent that brings something about d : sufficient reason 2 a : a ground of legal action b : case 3 : a matter or question to be decided 4 a : a principle or movement militantly defended or supported b : a charitable undertaking >> _______________________ Of course, one may provide a diverse meaning, but one has to then explain and warrant it. Going a bit further: 1: Wiki's admission against interest: >> Causality is the relationship between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is a consequence of the first.[1] . . . . Though cause and effect are typically related to events, candidates include objects, processes, properties, variables, facts, and states of affairs; characterizing the causal relationship can be the subject of much debate. According to Sowa (2000),[5] up until the twentieth century, three assumptions described by Max Born in 1949 were dominant in the definition of causality: 1. "Causality postulates that there are laws by which the occurrence of an entity B of a certain class depends on the occurrence of an entity A of another class, where the word entity means any physical object, phenomenon, situation, or event. A is called the cause, B the effect. 2. "Antecedence postulates that the cause must be prior to, or at least simultaneous with, the effect. 3. "Contiguity postulates that cause and effect must be in spatial contact or connected by a chain of intermediate things in contact." (Born, 1949, as cited in Sowa, 2000) However, according to Sowa (2000), "relativity and quantum mechanics have forced physicists to abandon these assumptions as exact statements of what happens at the most fundamental levels, but they remain valid at the level of human experience."[5] >> --> What that proviso means is that for instance the various quantum erasure variants on Young's double slit experiment are pointing to a domain beyond the commonly observed world in which effects we see in odd temporal orders have their causal roots. --> In fact, our observation is after the fact of the whole event. 2: Catholic Enc: >>Cause, as the correlative of effect, is understood as being that which in any way gives existence to, or contributes towards the existence of, any thing; which produces a result; to which the origin of any thing is to be ascribed . . . Although the ideas of cause and of causality are quite obviously among the most familiar that we possess, since they are involved in every exercise of human reasoning, and are presupposed in every form of argument and by every practical action, a very great vagueness attaches to the popular concept of them and a correspondingly great ambiguity is to be found in the use of the terms expressing them . . . . As a matter of fact, all mankind by nature attributes to certain phenomena a causative action upon others. This natural attribution of the relationship of cause and effect to phenomena is anterior to all philosophical statement and analysis. Objects of sense are grouped roughly into two classes--those that act and those that are acted upon. No necessarily conscious reflection seems to enter into the judgment that partitions natural things into causes and effects. But when we proceed to ask ourselves precisely what we mean when we say, for example, that A is cause and B effect, that A causes B, or that B is the result of A, we raise the question of causality. Whatever answer we put forward, it will be the statement of our conception of causation. It will be the expression of our judgment as to the actual relationship between A and B involved in the conception of the one as cause and of the other as effect . . . . "Consider", a Scholastic would say, "a substantial change--that is to say, a change in which one substance, made known to the understanding by its qualities, ceases to be what it was in the instant A, and becomes, in the instant B, another substance. In order that such a change should be possible, four things are necessary: namely, 1. the thing that is changed; 2. the term, or manner of being, or essence, that is induced in that which is changed; 3. the active agent that produces the change, or accomplishes the existence of the new term, manner of being, or essence; and 4. the motive, or reason why this latter acts. There is also, though it cannot be reckoned as a cause, the terminus a quo, or the original determinative of the thing changed, which passes out of being with the advent of the newly induced term. These four necessary things, since they produce the final result by a mutual action and interaction, in which they give being to it considered as result, are its causes. They are to be discovered, moreover, wherever and whenever any change takes place, not only in substantial, but also in accidental, changes, or mere changes of qualities." Consider the two cases, the one of accidental, the other of substantial, change. A cube of wax is moulded by the hand into a sphere. The wax, as permanent substratum of the change of figure, is considered to be the matter, or material cause. The spherical figure supervening upon that of the cubical, is the induced formal cause. The moulder, or fashioner of the sphere, is the efficient cause. The final cause is to be sought for in the intention of the moulder. The substance of the wax remains throughout the entire process of the moulding. It is affected only accidentally by the operation. Consequently the example is one of accidental change, and gives us no more than an accidental formal cause. But in cases of substantial change, such as, for example, the electrolysis of water, the induced formal cause is a substantial one; and, moreover, since the substance of the water does not remain after the change has taken place, the material cause cannot be other than a subject, or permanent substratum, that is neither water nor oxygen and hydrogen taken together. In such a case, it is called primordial, or first matter, and is conceived as being a subject potential to information by any and all formal causes. It is a potentiality, but, as a permanent substratum, or determinable entity, is capable of receiving new substantial determinations in the place of that which actually denominates it. It cannot exist alone, but exists only as informed, or actuated by a formal cause. It is not eternal, but created, or, more properly, concreated with substantial form. >> --> What the current debates on cause have to reckon with as background GEM of TKIkairosfocus
May 31, 2010
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Toronto, If I may make a suggestion. StephenB apparently has found you in a hole of your own making. He has handed you both a rope and a shovel in the form of several questions. The rope can be accessed by answering the questions. The shovel is accessed by squirming left and right traveling along a somewhat goofy set of assertions about abstractions. ACCESS the ROPE before you reach the earth' core! You are perilously close. Others, I know next to zip about programming, but one thing seems to stand out in the whole data/instruction debate, and I'd say niwrad has the upper hand. Consider the most advanced chess playing programs. I'd bet that they could be written in some of that fancy code where what is data and what is program seems obscure. In fact some programs assign values to positions, and those values could be construed as something that was unprogrammed, or at least unforeseen, more than just data. After all, the program may be considering positions that the prgrammers have not explicitly listed. However the program cannot "give what is doesn't have to give". It will never do what humans have done for millenia: change the rules of chess. I am unsure if this is helpful to your conversation, perhaps if only to demonstrate what one non-techie layman is getting out of it. On the other hand, I am sure that StephenB is trouncing poor Toronto.Tim
May 30, 2010
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Interesting conversation. If niwrad can spare the time, I'd like to ask a few simple questions. 1) What is meant by the claim that nature is blind? 2) Is this a scientific claim, or a purely philosophical one? And if scientific, how can it be tested? I ask this because I see a problem with your argument, but my criticism comes from exact opposite perspective of most of those arguing with you. You say, Modern evolutionary theory proposes several unguided mechanisms in order to explain the alleged global macroevolution of species My response: How in the world can we tell if these mechanisms are guided or not? How can we tell whether or not they were implemented knowingly by a designer? (And incidentally, defenders of genetic programming will have to admit that hard proof exists that designers are capable of implementing these things. Otherwise, that field of genetic programming would not exist.) My own view is it seems that this question is philosophical rather than scientific - it's like a character in Sims 3 speculating whether the laws that govern his world are guided or not (How could he tell?). But at the same time, assuming said Sim could instantiate these laws in a program, the only limited evidence he would have available would universally point to ID. Anything else would be baseless speculation, almost by definition. I guess my criticism would best be viewed as coming from a competing ID perspective, in the broad sense.nullasalus
May 30, 2010
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StephenB @ 142,
—“You can’t say that communication protocol stacks don’t have peer relationships simply because one is implemented over a serial port and the other over Ethernet” Irrelevant.
It's not irrelevant since it is an example to you, of a true peer-to-peer relationship. The serial port driver and the Ethernet driver work entirely differently despite providing the same service to the upper levels of the protocol stack. The only characteristic they share is the use of electricity and yet they are peers of one another, just like our respective designers are.Toronto
May 30, 2010
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StephenB @ 142,
What does that say about your intellectual honesty?
Does a question like this narrow the gap between us or widen it?Toronto
May 30, 2010
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StephenB @ 142,
What does my list have to do with the legitimacy of the principle?
Nothing, so why make the list?Toronto
May 30, 2010
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StephenB @ 143,
I think it is clear who is confused and who is not.
Agreed.Toronto
May 30, 2010
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