Biology evolves: One-third of biologists now question Darwinism

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May 11, 2019

Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design

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Darwinism
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The figure is suggested by Michael Behe, based on reading and conversations with his colleagues. Of course, it’s a bit like asking how many citizens of the People’s Democratic Republic of Dungeon disapprove of the government. It’s not like you can ask them to vote on it or anything. Still:

A controversial letter to Nature in 2014 signaled the mounting concern, however slow and cautious, among thoughtful professional biologists. Other works by atheist authors like “What Darwin Got Wrong” and “Mind and Cosmos” find “fatal flaws” in the theory and assert it is “almost certainly false.”

Another project, The Third Way, seeks to avoid a false choice between divine intervention (which it outright rejects) and the Neo-Darwinian model (which it finds unsupported in the face of modern molecular theory) while presenting evidence to improve evolution theory beyond Neo-Darwinism. Some even believe billions of years have not been adequate for Darwinian theory to accomplish current complexity, as the theory currently exists.

This dissatisfaction is a matter of public record, even if it lacks public attention, and despite the narrative running contrary. Indeed dedicated Neo-Darwinists often say “no serious scientists disagree” or “only creationists have problems.” These contentions are increasingly disproven. Benjamin R. Dierker, “Why One-Third Of Biologists Now Question Darwinism” at The Federalist

Don’t miss Dierker’s interesting information about the Third Way.

Meanwhile, what was that story flapping past just the other day?

Oh, yes: Astronomer Martin Rees reacts to Suzan Mazur’s Darwin Overthrown. The story addresses the way Rees has been in the background of creative thinkers in biology who are grappling with what we now know.

Non-Darwinian things.

Naw. Just a fluke. Then there’s this one: Backing down on Darwinian fundamentalism? If we are going to talk about “considerable debate” and “much that is unknown,” let’s consider the way underlying Darwinian fundamentalism skews discussions.

Hey, look, everything could just be a fluke, you know.

See also: If no one is really a Darwinist any more… (as some commenters claim) … How come Darwinian philosopher Michael Ruse says, “Today’s professional evolutionists are committed Darwinians… ?” Could he be blowing smoke?

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Comments

F/N: One link. The 58 pp paper. KFkairosfocus_{May 13, 2019
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hazel,
If such creatures had managed to survive through materialist processes, as Plantinga is assuming here, then it would seem to me almost certain that behaviors and beliefs that were adaptive would have to have a fairly close correspondence to reality. Those creatures that believed that falling off a cliff wouldn’t hurt you wouldn’t have survived, and those that believed otherwise would have survived, so the belief that falling off a cliff would hurt you, which is a true fact, would have been established.
Nicely put. For at least some beliefs, the probability/likelihood of them being true must be far higher than 50%.daveS_{May 13, 2019
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H, Plantinga's argument is not 50-50, but low or inscrutable, and there is a 58 pp paper that lays it out in details. Unlike your suggestion, he is not simply "assuming." However, I am presenting a more basic issue that is associated, and as names like Haldane indicate, is longstanding, as in about 90 years old. I take it that by naturalism, we are speaking of evolutionary materialistic scientism, which is inter alia physicalist, i.e. physical facts exhaust all facts. This implies that one would have to account for rational contemplation, responsible decision, moral government etc on material substrates (including that some such are computational and can be programmed somehow). The problem is, as Haldane and Reppert et al indicate, this runs into extreme difficulties as outlined. Difficulties that are reflexive and would undermind the credibility of the minds we use to assess evidence and reason to draw naturalism itself as a conclusion. In short, self-referential incoherence. KF PS: Not is it just those who have questions who see this, note Rosenberg:
Alex Rosenberg as he begins Ch 9 of his The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: >> FOR SOLID EVOLUTIONARY REASONS, WE’VE BEEN tricked into looking at life from the inside. Without scientism, we look at life from the inside, from the first-person POV (OMG, you don’t know what a POV is?—a “point of view”). The first person is the subject, the audience, the viewer of subjective experience, the self in the mind. Scientism shows that the first-person POV is an illusion. [–> grand delusion is let loose in utter self referential incoherence] Even after scientism convinces us, we’ll continue to stick with the first person. But at least we’ll know that it’s another illusion of introspection and we’ll stop taking it seriously. We’ll give up all the answers to the persistent questions about free will, the self, the soul, and the meaning of life that the illusion generates [–> bye bye to responsible, rational freedom on these presuppositions]. The physical facts fix all the facts. [--> asserts materialism, leading to . . . ] The mind is the brain. It has to be physical and it can’t be anything else, since thinking, feeling, and perceiving are physical process—in particular, input/output processes—going on in the brain. We [–> at this point, what "we," apart from "we delusions"?] can be sure of a great deal about how the brain works because the physical facts fix all the facts about the brain. The fact that the mind is the brain guarantees that there is no free will. It rules out any purposes or designs organizing our actions or our lives [–> thus rational thought and responsible freedom]. It excludes the very possibility of enduring persons, selves, or souls that exist after death or for that matter while we live.>>
kairosfocus_{May 13, 2019
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As usual, it seems, important distinctions are being missed by ba and kf. I am not arguing for materialism. I understand, and accept, that ba, kf, and Plantinga don’t think a universe of purely material processes could have produced life, human beings, or consciously held beliefs of any kind. What I am arguing is that Plantinga’s argument that if purely material beings existed, their beliefs would have a 50-50% chance of being true, is not supported by him in any way. He just asserts it without any supporting argument. Here’s a longer quote, with bolding by me:
Now suppose we think about some creatures on an alien planet that are a lot like us. Let’s suppose for them that naturalism holds, that evolution holds, and that these creatures are material objects. So what is it that causes their behaviour? What causes their behaviour will be neurology, the states of which their neurons are firing sending a signal down to a muscle causing it to contract. And their beliefs and the content of these beliefs are also caused by neurology. Now given that evolution is true these creatures have come into being by virtue of natural selection we can take it for granted that their behaviour is adaptive, it enhances their fitness which leads to survival and reproduction. If that is true the same thing will go for what causes their behaviour, namely their neurology which also promotes survival and reproduction. The neurology that causes their behaviour also causes their beliefs, but now the question is “suppose their behaviour is in fact adaptive what about the truths of these beliefs?” Well, I think that you can see that it doesn’t matter about the truths of these beliefs. If their neurology causes the right behaviour what they believe makes no difference. The belief, one might say, floats along like an extra that’s caused by the neurology. But the beliefs don’t have to be true for the neurology to be adaptive. If the neurology causes false beliefs but causes the right actions it makes no difference whatsoever. So, if you take a given belief on the part of one of these creatures and ask “What is the probability given that naturalism and evolution and materialism that the belief is true?” It’s got to be fairly close to 50/50, it is likely to be true as false, or it likely to be false as true. If that is the case then the probability that their cognitive faculties are reliable, which produces a substantial proportion of true beliefs that reliability requires, the probability that their faculties will be reliable will be very low”
Why does it “got to be fairly close to 50/50”? If such creatures had managed to survive through materialist processes, as Plantinga is assuming here, then it would seem to me almost certain that behaviors and beliefs that were adaptive would have to have a fairly close correspondence to reality. Those creatures that believed that falling off a cliff wouldn’t hurt you wouldn’t have survived, and those that believed otherwise would have survived, so the belief that falling off a cliff would hurt you, which is a true fact, would have been established. Likewise for most beliefs about reality: beliefs about the physical world would be in close correspondence about the real world. This would be the case even for materialistic “robots” as long as there was a mechanism in place, which Plantaga is assuming there is in this scenario, for sorting out behaviors and beliefs that are adaptive from those that aren’t. So I see no justification for the assertion that the probability of a belief being true has “got to be fairly close to 50/50” That is the point I’m making.hazel_{May 13, 2019
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BA77
Brother Brian, you, having now displaced Seversky as the resident troll, are currently the reigning king of ‘stupid arguments’ on UD.
Why? Are you abdicating the throne? :)Brother Brian_{May 13, 2019
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"if his argument were spelled out in greater detail, I could understand its force." see post 21bornagain77_{May 13, 2019
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hazel, KF, I also don't find Plantinga's argument, as presented in that interview, to be at all convincing. On the other hand, I don't believe Plantinga is stupid, so perhaps if his argument were spelled out in greater detail, I could understand its force. Anyway, as a step toward understanding the issues, here's a scenario. Suppose we send a rover to Mars to collect information (e.g., Opportunity). This one is fully autonomous and simply drives around taking measurements and storing the results in its database, without any guidance from Earthlings. Let's suppose the rover performs measurements of some geological features, for example the diameters of craters. It finds a 95% confidence interval for one such diameter is [99, 101] meters (based on calibrations done on Earth) and transmits this message back to Earth. Clearly more than 50% of the rover's measurements/confidence intervals should include the true value, right? But the rover is merely a material object. Why doesn't Plantinga's argument apply to it?daveS_{May 13, 2019
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F/N (attn H, BB et al): J B S Haldane, one of the leaders of the neo-darwinian synthesis:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. (NB: DI Fellow, Nancy Pearcey brings this right up to date (HT: ENV) in a current book, Finding Truth.)]
Reppert builds on this, showing why computation on a substrate is categorically different from rational contemplation:
. . . let us suppose that brain state A [--> notice, state of a wetware, electrochemically operated computational substrate], which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief [--> concious, perceptual state or disposition] that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [But] if naturalism [--> note, he here premises NATURALISM] is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions
Absent genuine rational, responsible contemplative freedom governed by duties to truth, to right reason, to prudence, to fairness/justice etc, mindedness collapses into grand delusion, including the chains of reason above. So, we may freely make a Hoylean we are here argument: reality can only be such as is compatible with creatures like us. That means there is a facet to reality that allows a genuinely freely rational and responsible life. So, we need an adequate world root capable of bridging computation and contemplation as well as is and ought. What best fits that bill: ________ and why: ___________ ??? Candidate to beat: the God of ethical theism: inherently good, utterly wise, creator, necessary of being, maximally great being. KFkairosfocus_{May 13, 2019
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But there is no reason to assume that "naturalism" would mean that beliefs had a 50-50 chance of being true. This is a quintessential strawman.hazel_{May 12, 2019
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For crying out loud, you can't divorce Plantinga's argument from the metaphysics since it is in fact the "Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism". Naturalistic metaphysics is the main focus of the argument for crying out loud. I give up. You are hopeless, I'm out of here and I'm going back to banging my head on my desk. Goodnight. Bangs head on keyboard https://media0.giphy.com/media/26BRq84rhISRcFVUQ/giphy.gif?bornagain77_{May 12, 2019
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I haven't been discussing evolution. I'm saying that no matter what your metaphysics is, starting with the premise that a belief has a 50-50 chance of being true is stupid.hazel_{May 12, 2019
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Hazel you claim that evolution is a 'lawful process'? Really??? Perhaps you would care to elucidate the exact laws behind the evolutionary process. No one else has been able to find them. As Ernst Mayr himself conceded, “In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.”
The Evolution of Ernst: Interview with Ernst Mayr – 2004 (page 2 of 14) Excerpt: biology (Darwinian Evolution) differs from the physical sciences in that in the physical sciences, all theories, I don’t know exceptions so I think it’s probably a safe statement, all theories are based somehow or other on natural laws. In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences. ,,, And so that’s what I do in this book. I show that the theoretical basis, you might call it, or I prefer to call it the philosophy of biology, has a totally different basis than the theories of physics. https://www.scientificamerican.com/media/pdf/0004D8E1-178C-10EB-978C83414B7F012C.pdf
In the following article, Roger Highfield makes much the same observation as Ernst Mayr and states, ,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology.
WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Evolution is True – Roger Highfield – January 2014 Excerpt: If evolutionary biologists are really Seekers of the Truth, they need to focus more on finding the mathematical regularities of biology, following in the giant footsteps of Sewall Wright, JBS Haldane, Ronald Fisher and so on. ,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology. Little seems to have changed from a decade ago when the late and great John Maynard Smith wrote a chapter on evolutionary game theory for a book on the most powerful equations of science: his contribution did not include a single equation. http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25468
Professor Murray Eden of MIT, in a paper entitled “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory” stated that “the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.”
“It is our contention that if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.” Murray Eden, “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,” Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, June 1967, p. 109. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/evol/compevol_files/Wistar-Eden-1.pdf
bornagain77_{May 12, 2019
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Lawful processes don't produce random results. It doesn't take Christianity, or even theism, to understand that.hazel_{May 12, 2019
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"Whatever belief is, or where it comes from, it’s not just a random coin flip." Welcome to Christianity.
Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God. — C.S. Lewis (from, The Case for Christianity) “One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the popular scientific philosophy]. The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears… unless Reason is an absolute, all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.” —C.S. Lewis, Is Theology Poetry (aka the Argument from Reason)
Brother Brian, you, having now displaced Seversky as the resident troll, are currently the reigning king of 'stupid arguments' on UD.bornagain77_{May 12, 2019
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Hazel
That is just about the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard.
Me
Stick around.
And after a couple responses to you all I can say is, “I told you so.”Brother Brian_{May 12, 2019
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No matter what your metaphysics is, starting with "If a belief is as likely to be false as to be true, we’d have to say the probability that any particular belief is true is about 50 percent" is stupid. Whatever belief is, or where it comes from, it's not just a random coin flip.hazel_{May 12, 2019
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Don't hurt yourself! :-)hazel_{May 12, 2019
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"I am not a materialist, and don’t think much about what “Darwinian processes” are." But somehow feels free to comment on Plantinga's argument? Bangs head on keyboard https://media0.giphy.com/media/26BRq84rhISRcFVUQ/giphy.gif?bornagain77_{May 12, 2019
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ba writes, "But how in blue blazes, via atheistic materialism, did you arrive at that true belief? That is Plantinga’s whole point. You have no warrant, much less empirical demonstration, that Darwinian processes produced that true belief," First, I assume by Darwinian processes you mean according to a materialist philosophy. I am not a materialist, and don't think much about what "Darwinian processes" are. But that is immaterial, and your question is weird. People have arrived at the belief that falling long distance hurts and kills people by watching people fall and get hurt. I don't even know what point you could be trying to make. We know it's true because we can see what happens.hazel_{May 12, 2019
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But how in blue blazes, via atheistic materialism, did you arrive at that true belief? That is Plantinga's whole point. You have no warrant, much less empirical demonstration, that Darwinian processes produced that true belief, Atheistic materialism, especially with its denial of free will, simply cannot explain the 'ORIGIN" of true beliefs.
ALVIN PLANTINGA’S EVOLUTIONARY ARGUMENT AGAINST NATURALISM July 9, 2016 Plantinga notes that if human beings are a result of the evolutionary process then one needs to maintain that the main purpose of our cognitive faculties are for survival and reproductive fitness. In other words, as a process, evolution doesn’t care about truth or true beliefs. Rather, it only cares whether or not our actions are adaptive and whether or not they contribute to our fitness. As Plantinga argues, if this is the case then the naturalist would be unwarranted to expect his or her cognitive faculties to be aimed at truth. The implications for the naturalist are significant. If one’s mind is merely aimed at survival then it follows that the mind cannot be trusted when it thinks it knows the truth. This would undermine the trustworthiness of the human cognitive faculty as atheists themselves such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Thomas Nagel have noted. Even Charles Darwin, the mind who established that all species of life descended over time from common ancestors, likewise saw this dilemma, “But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?” According to Plantinga, “This argument has to do with the reliability of your cognitive faculties like memory and perception, intuition, and mathematical or logical intuition… I think if you accept naturalism and evolution you can’t think of your cognitive faculties as being reliable, as giving you the actual truth about the world… The argument goes like this. If you’re a naturalist you will probably also be a materialist about human beings. You’ll think that human beings are material objects. They are not immaterial souls that have a body. Now suppose we think about some creatures on an alien planet that are a lot like us. Let’s suppose for them that naturalism holds, that evolution holds, and that these creatures are material objects. So what is it that causes their behaviour? What causes their behaviour will be neurology, the states of which their neurons are firing sending a signal down to a muscle causing it to contract. And their beliefs and the content of these beliefs are also caused by neurology. Now given that evolution is true these creatures have come into being by virtue of natural selection we can take it for granted that their behaviour is adaptive, it enhances their fitness which leads to survival and reproduction. If that is true the same thing will go for what causes their behaviour, namely their neurology which also promotes survival and reproduction. The neurology that causes their behaviour also causes their beliefs, but now the question is “suppose their behaviour is in fact adaptive what about the truths of these beliefs?” Well, I think that you can see that it doesn’t matter about the truths of these beliefs. If their neurology causes the right behaviour what they believe makes no difference. The belief, one might say, floats along like an extra that’s caused by the neurology. But the beliefs don’t have to be true for the neurology to be adaptive. If the neurology causes false beliefs but causes the right actions it makes no difference whatsoever. So, if you take a given belief on the part of one of these creatures and ask “What is the probability given that naturalism and evolution and materialism that the belief is true?” It’s got to be fairly close to 50/50, it is likely to be true as false, or it likely to be false as true. If that is the case then the probability that their cognitive faculties are reliable, which produces a substantial proportion of true beliefs that reliability requires, the probability that their faculties will be reliable will be very low” (1). The prominent atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel has also seen this challenge, “Evolutionary naturalism provides an account of our capacities that undermines their reliability, and in doing so undermines itself… In fact, Nagel appeals to Plantinga, “I agree with Alvin Plantinga that… the application of evolutionary theory to the understanding of our own cognitive capacities should undermine, though it need not completely destroy, our confidence in them. Mechanisms of belief formation that have selective advantage in the everyday struggle for existence do not warrant our confidence in the construction of theoretical accounts of the world as a whole. I think the evolutionary hypothesis would imply that though our cognitive capacities could be reliable, we do not have the kind of reason to rely on them that we ordinarily take ourselves to have using in them directly-as we do in science” (2). What is the conclusion Plantinga draws from the argument? If his argument follows then it, “provides a defeater for your natural instinctive belief that your cognitive faculties are reliable… you get a reason not to hold that belief, a reason to reject it.” Thus combining naturalism with evolution is self-defeating because the probability that humans would have reliable cognitive faculties as a result is so overwhelming low. The human cognitive faculty cannot be trusted to produce more true beliefs than false beliefs. Thus to assert that naturalistic evolution is true the naturalist also asserts that one has a low or unknown probability of being right. If evolution is true, which the vast majority of naturalists believe to be the case, then ascribing truth to naturalism and evolution is dubious or inconsistent. References. 1. What is the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, Alvin Plantinga. Available. 2. Nagel, T. 2012. Mind and Cosmos. p. 27-28. https://jamesbishopblog.com/2016/07/09/the-evolutionary-argument-against-naturalism/ And again, Hoffman has, via population genetics itself, basically validated Plantinga's entire argument through numerous computer simulations: The Case Against Reality – May 13, 2016 Excerpt: Hoffman seems to come to a conclusion similar to the one Alvin Plantinga argues in ch. 10 of Where the Conflict Really Lies: we should not expect — in the absence of further argument — that creatures formed by a naturalistic evolutionary process would have veridical perceptions.,,, First, even if Hoffman’s argument were restricted to visual perception, and not to our cognitive faculties more generally (e.g., memory, introspection, a priori rational insight, testimonial belief, inferential reasoning, etc.), the conclusion that our visual perceptions would be wholly unreliable given natural selection would be sufficient for Plantinga’s conclusion of self-defeat. After all, reliance upon the veridicality of our visual perceptions was and always will be crucial for any scientific argument for the truth of evolution. So if these perceptions cannot be trusted, we have little reason to think evolutionary theory is true. Second, it’s not clear that Hoffman’s application of evolutionary game theory is only specially applicable to visual perception, rather than being relevant for our cognitive faculties generally. If “we find that veridical perceptions can be driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies that are tuned to utility rather than objective reality” (2010, p. 504, my emphasis), then why wouldn’t veridical cognitive faculties (more generally) be driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies that are tuned to utility rather than objective reality? After all, evolutionary theory purports to be the true account of the formation of all of our cognitive faculties, not just our faculty of visual perception. If evolutionary game theory proves that “true perception generally goes extinct” when “animals that perceive the truth compete with others that sacrifice truth for speed and energy-efficiency” (2008), why wouldn’t there be a similar sacrifice with respect to other cognitive faculties? In fact, Hoffman regards the following theorem as now proven: “According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness” (Atlantic interview). But then wouldn’t it also be the case that an organism that cognizes reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that cognizes none of reality but is just tuned to fitness? On the evolutionary story, every cognitive faculty we have was produced by a process that was tuned to fitness (rather than tuned to some other value, such as truth). http://www.gregwelty.com/2016/05/the-case-against-reality/
So again, its evidence against the apriori beliefs of atheists. Guess which one Hazel will choose?bornagain77_{May 12, 2019
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ba writes, "perhaps you can provide actual examples of where a set of initial beliefs are far more likely to be true than not." In the Colin Patterson thread I pointed out that "I know not to walk off a 1000 ft cliff because I will fall and kill myself." I believe that has a better than 50% chance of being true.hazel_{May 12, 2019
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Hazel, instead of you merely stating your 'stupid' atheistic opinion that "That is just about the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard" perhaps you can provide actual examples of where a set of initial beliefs are far more likely to be true than not. Science itself, with its multitude of discarded false hypothesis, and its relatively few true hypothesis that have survived the 'empirical gauntlet' to be accepted as true, argues very strongly against your position that any given set of initial beliefs will most likely be true. (Much less do you have any empirical evidence for your proposition that Darwinian processes will produce reliable cognitive faculties), (Shoot you don't even have any evidence that Darwinian processes can produce even a single functional protein, much less reliable cognitive faculties)) Moreover, to make matters much worse for Darwinists, the acceptance of the veracity of those true hypothesis by scientists as being true is certainly not arrived at via Darwinian processes, but is arrived at via rational discourse, which again, is the one thing that atheistic materialism, with its denial of free will, prevents a person from ever having.
Sam Harris’s Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It – Martin Cothran – November 9, 2012 Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state — including their position on this issue — is the effect of a physical, not logical cause. By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/sam_harriss_fre066221.html 1) rationality implies a thinker in control of thoughts. (2) under materialism a thinker is an effect caused by processes in the brain. (3) in order for materialism to ground rationality a thinker (an effect) must control processes in the brain (a cause). (1)&(2) (4) no effect can control its cause. Therefore materialism cannot ground rationality. per Box UD
Moreover, besides the fact that the atheistic materialist forsakes any claim that he is making a rational argument in the first place when he denies the reality of his own free will, I can also appeal to empirical evidence from both neuroscience and quantum mechanics to support the reality of free will.
(December 2018) Neuroscientific and quantum validation of free will https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/three-knockdown-proofs-of-the-immateriality-of-mind-and-why-computers-compute-not-think/#comment-670445
Thus again, the atheist is at a complete loss to explain even the 'simple' proposition of how a person might arrive at a true belief, whereas the Christian Theist is, once again, found to be sitting very well in regards to both logic and empirical evidence. To put all this in proper perspective, it is good to look at the 'beyond belief' complexity of the brain itself which Darwinists have absolutely no hope of ever explaining in Darwinian terms:
The Human Brain Is 'Beyond Belief' by Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Ph.D. * - 2017 Excerpt: The human brain,, is an engineering marvel that evokes comments from researchers like “beyond anything they’d imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief”1 and “a world we had never imagined.”2,,, Perfect Optimization The scientists found that at multiple hierarchical levels in the whole brain, nerve cell clusters (ganglion), and even at the individual cell level, the positioning of neural units achieved a goal that human engineers strive for but find difficult to achieve—the perfect minimizing of connection costs among all the system’s components.,,, Vast Computational Power Researchers discovered that a single synapse is like a computer’s microprocessor containing both memory-storage and information-processing features.,,, Just one synapse alone can contain about 1,000 molecular-scale microprocessor units acting in a quantum computing environment. An average healthy human brain contains some 200 billion nerve cells connected to one another through hundreds of trillions of synapses. To put this in perspective, one of the researchers revealed that the study’s results showed a single human brain has more information processing units than all the computers, routers, and Internet connections on Earth.1,,, Phenomenal Processing Speed the processing speed of the brain had been greatly underrated. In a new research study, scientists found the brain is 10 times more active than previously believed.6,7,,, The large number of dendritic spikes also means the brain has more than 100 times the computational capabilities than was previously believed.,,, Petabyte-Level Memory Capacity Our new measurements of the brain’s memory capacity increase conservative estimates by a factor of 10 to at least a petabyte, in the same ballpark as the World Wide Web.9,,, Optimal Energy Efficiency Stanford scientist who is helping develop computer brains for robots calculated that a computer processor functioning with the computational capacity of the human brain would require at least 10 megawatts to operate properly. This is comparable to the output of a small hydroelectric power plant. As amazing as it may seem, the human brain requires only about 10 watts to function.11 ,,, Multidimensional Processing It is as if the brain reacts to a stimulus by building then razing a tower of multi-dimensional blocks, starting with rods (1D), then planks (2D), then cubes (3D), and then more complex geometries with 4D, 5D, etc. The progression of activity through the brain resembles a multi-dimensional sandcastle that materializes out of the sand and then disintegrates.13 He also said: We found a world that we had never imagined. There are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to eleven dimensions.13,,, Biophoton Brain Communication Neurons contain many light-sensitive molecules such as porphyrin rings, flavinic, pyridinic rings, lipid chromophores, and aromatic amino acids. Even the mitochondria machines that produce energy inside cells contain several different light-responsive molecules called chromophores. This research suggests that light channeled by filamentous cellular structures called microtubules plays an important role in helping to coordinate activities in different regions of the brain.,,, https://www.icr.org/article/10186
Perhaps atheists should concentrate on trying to explain where a single neuron of that 'beyond belief' complexity came from before they try to take on the task of trying explain the origin of reliable cognitive faculties from a Darwinian perspective
"Complexity Brake" Defies Evolution - August 8, 2012 Excerpt: Consider a neuronal synapse -- the presynaptic terminal has an estimated 1000 distinct proteins. Fully analyzing their possible interactions would take about 2000 years. Or consider the task of fully characterizing the visual cortex of the mouse -- about 2 million neurons. Under the extreme assumption that the neurons in these systems can all interact with each other, analyzing the various combinations will take about 10 million years..., even though it is assumed that the underlying technology speeds up by an order of magnitude each year. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/08/complexity_brak062961.html Human Brains Have Always Been Unique – June 22, 2017 Excerpt: 'To truly understand how the brain maintains our human intellect, we would need to know about the state of all 86 billion neurons and their 100 trillion interconnections, as well as the varying strengths with which they are connected, and the state of more than 1,000 proteins that exist at each connection point.' - Mark Maslin https://crev.info/2017/06/human-brains-always-unique/
bornagain77_{May 12, 2019
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Hazel
That is just about the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard.
Stick around. :)Brother Brian_{May 12, 2019
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From above, Plantinga writes,
In fact, given materialism and evolution, it follows that our belief-producing faculties are not reliable. Here’s why. If a belief is as likely to be false as to be true, we’d have to say the probability that any particular belief is true is about 50 percent. Now suppose we had a total of 100 independent beliefs (of course, we have many more). Remember that the probability that all of a group of beliefs are true is the multiplication of all their individual probabilities. Even if we set a fairly low bar for reliability — say, that at least two-thirds (67 percent) of our beliefs are true — our overall reliability, given materialism and evolution, is exceedingly low: something like .0004
That is just about the stupidest argument I've ever heard.hazel_{May 12, 2019
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Seversky's post at 13 is a garbage heap of pure unsubstantiated opinion. I used Plantinga's work and Hoffman's work on population genetics itself, to show that if Darwinian evolution were true, then our beliefs and perceptions would be unreliable. Seversky did not even try to rigorously refute this but simply denied, via his own personal opinion, that it was so, Seversky's post is a shining example of an atheist's apriori atheistic belief trumping any and all countervailing evidence. As has been pointed out many times before, Darwinian evolution is a dogmatic religion far more than it is a falsifiable science,,,
GIVING UP DARWIN - May 2019 "The religion is all on the other side. Meyer and other proponents of I.D. are the dispassionate intellectuals making orderly scientific arguments. Some I.D.-haters have shown themselves willing to use any argument—fair or not, true or not, ad hominem or not—to keep this dangerous idea locked in a box forever. They remind us of the extent to which Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory but the basis of a worldview, and an emergency replacement religion for the many troubled souls who need one." - David Gelernter is professor of computer science at Yale University, chief scientist at Mirror Worlds Technologies, and member of the National Council of the Arts. https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/giving-up-darwin
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DaveS
Thanks, that’s a much more intelligent approach than what I had in mind.
Damn. That is two compliments on this site in two days. Where is ET to bring me back down to earth. :) But seriously, surveys are notoriously flawed. The way the question is worded can result in s different outcome.Brother Brian_{May 12, 2019
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Brother Brian, Thanks, that's a much more intelligent approach than what I had in mind.daveS_{May 12, 2019
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Bornagain77 @ 5
In fact, in one of the more humorous falsifications of Darwin’s theory, (out of many falsifications of Darwin’s theory), is that if Darwinian evolution were actually true then any opinions and/or beliefs, (‘professional’ or otherwise), that anyone may have would be completely worthless.
Worthless? By what measure? According to whom?
First off, if Darwinian evolution were true, then any opinions and/or beliefs that a person may hold are not arrived at via the free will choices of that person between logical options, but their opinion(s) was arrived at purely by the prior physiological state of that person’s brain. In short, if Darwinian evolution were actually true then a person has ‘no choice’ whatsoever in whatever opinions and/or beliefs he may hold to be true or not.
Much like Peter's triple denial of Jesus? The observation that mental processes are closely correlated with electro-chemical activity in the physical brain does not mean that one is absolutely and exclusively determined by the other. The third factor to consider is the environment in which that mind/brain has to operate and survive. In fact, we can argue that a system which can respond flexibly - in other words adapt - to environmental pressures would have a fitness advantage over the rigidly deterministic model you seem to envisage. Is that free will? That depends on what you mean by "free will".
Why Atheism is Nonsense Pt.5 – “Naturalism is a Self-defeating Idea”video Excerpt: “Since we are creatures of natural selection, we cannot totally trust our senses. Evolution only passes on traits that help a species survive, and not concerned with preserving traits that tell a species what is actually true about life.” Richard Dawkins – quoted from “The God Delusion”

We can easily argue that the truer one's understanding of the environment in which we have to survive, the greater our chances of survival. Therefore, a truth-seeking trait, at least in a proximate and pragmatic sense, would have a fitness value which would be more likely to be preserved. And if it was preserved it might be adapted to more philosophical considerations of truth.
Is Atheism Irrational? By GARY GUTTING – NY Times – February 9, 2014 Excerpt: GG: So your claim is that if materialism is true, evolution doesn’t lead to most of our beliefs being true. Plantinga: Right. In fact, given materialism and evolution, it follows that our belief-producing faculties are not reliable. Here’s why. If a belief is as likely to be false as to be true, we’d have to say the probability that any particular belief is true is about 50 percent. Now suppose we had a total of 100 independent beliefs (of course, we have many more). Remember that the probability that all of a group of beliefs are true is the multiplication of all their individual probabilities. Even if we set a fairly low bar for reliability — say, that at least two-thirds (67 percent) of our beliefs are true — our overall reliability, given materialism and evolution, is exceedingly low: something like .0004. So if you accept both materialism and evolution, you have good reason to believe that your belief-producing faculties are not reliable.
On the assumption that there are many more ways for things to go wrong than to go right, then, yes, initially there will be many more false beliefs about a given phenomenon than true ones. Our beliefs generally will be unreliable. But if those beliefs have fitness consequences - in other words, false beliefs are more likely to get you killed whereas true ones are more likely to keep you alive - then, over time, natural selection will tend to filter out the false beliefs leaving only the true ones - and the mental processes which gave rise to them. Therefore truth-seeking will have survival value.Seversky_{May 12, 2019
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Ayearningforpublius @ 3
As my former boss and retired Marine Corp. General used to say:“[That Darwinian Evolution is false rubbish] should be obvious even to a sea-going corporal.”
Great as my respect is for the US Marine Corps as one of the world's elite military units, neither their corporals nor their generals are typically evolutionary biologists.Seversky_{May 12, 2019
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News @ 2
Seversky at 1, the law student did a reasonably good job of identifying key points in the timeline.
Maybe he did but that doesn't make him any more competent an authority on evolutionary biology than you or I. Whether you agree with him or not, Behe is at least a professional in the field.Seversky_{May 12, 2019
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