Darwinist Jeffrey Shallit asks, why can’t creationists do math?

Is this OP referring to something posted in this website: freethoughtblogs.com ? Here's what they say:

About Freethoughtblogs Freethoughtblogs is an open platform for freethought writers. We are skeptics and critics of dogma and authoritarianism, and in addition, we recognize that the nonexistence of deities entails a greater commitment to human values, and in particular, an appreciation of human diversity and equality. We are for feminism, against racism, for diversity, against inequity. Our network of blogs is designed to encourage independent thinking and individual autonomy — freethoughtblogs.com is a vehicle for giving vocal secularists a venue for discussion of their values and interests. Founders: PZ Myers, CEO Ed Brayton, CFO

Wow! That's quite a collection of blogs. Let's see how they do in the Alexa ranking (last 90 days): FTB.......134,079.......DN.......43.2 K That compares to Google.....................1..........unchanged // Google Bing.....................29.........UP 12 // Bing MSFT..............32.........UP 3 // MSFT FB....................4............DN 1 // Facebook YH...................10...........DN 1 // Yahoo! AMZ.................11...........DN 1 // Amazon MIT................592................DN 178 // MIT H..................956...............DN 170 // Harvard University UF..................4,308.............DN 1.08 K // UF D.............3,571............UP 834 // Disney EN...........139,980........DN 15.6 K // Evolution News BG...................819.......UP 34 // BibleGateway AiG............37,623........DN 4.31 K // Answers in Genesis RTB............343,682...........UP 36.6 K // Reasons.org jawa

The funny thing, BobRyan, is that I wasn't even talking about Darwinism (or creation). I was simply trying to inspire people to think about mathematics in a deeper way. I didn't even think it was controversial. johnnyb

There is no fossil without millions of years worth of gaps, no transitional fossils, no negative mutations. So much for the fossil's telling a story, but they still point to fossils to show Darwin at work. The e coli long-term evolutionary experiment wrapped up after 3 decades a couple of years ago. This was the equivalent of 1,000,000 years for man. They gave up, since they knew they would never find that magical mechanism at work. There was no macro-evolution discovered. Macro-evolution has never been witnessed in nature. Positive mutations are required for Darwin to be right. There has never been one positive mutation witnessed in nature. So, a math professor relies on a complete lack of evidence to support his belief in Darwin and he has the nerve to call out those that disagree with him. BobRyan

Sorry Hazel - simply associating Shallit's approach to that common to Darwinists. Not attempting to claim he is one, or that his particular response is related to evolution. Just pointing out the commonality of how many "experts" react to ideas they don't like. drc466

hazel, Shallit is just another very desperate loser. ET

Despite Shallit's cheap shots, I don't see anything about the actual topic of his post that has anything to do with creationism, or Darwinism, or anything other than just math. hazel

Default Darwinist position: When you can't argue facts, argue semantics. drc466

"Every evo who has ever lived fits that bill." I can witness to this. There may be exceptions, but I have not encountered any. They are programmed with some talking points. As far as evolutionists thinking past that goes, it doesn't happen(in my experience with evos). Andrew asauber

I know we can name thousands, if not millions, of evos who fit Aaron's description. Every evo who has ever lived fits that bill. The question is why? Not one can even test the claims of blind watchmaker evolution. ET

Aarin1978

SmartAz It’s not just darwinists it’s any arrogant fool that thinks they can’t be wrong, They get puffy when they are questioned and they start tossing out insults to make themselves feel better, ...

I think we can each name at least three ID supporters here who this describes to a tee. And you aren’t one of them. Brother Brian

Just as a note, in his previous fact-check of me, Shallit said:

And we also have Jonathan Bartlett asking "can you develop an effective procedure for checking proofs? and answering "The answer is, strangely, no." Actually the answer is "yes". A mathematical proof can indeed be checked and easily so (in principle). This has nothing to do with the statement of Bartlett that follows it: "It turns out that there are true facts that cannot be proved via mechanical means." Yes, that's so; but it has nothing to do with an effective procedure for checking proofs. Such a procedure would simply verify that each line follows from the previous one by an application of the axioms. If a statement S has a proof, there is a semi-algorithm that will even produce the proof: simply enumerate all proofs in order of length and check whether each one is a proof of S. The problem arises when a true statement simply does not have a proof. It has nothing to do with checking a given proof.

Here, Shallit doesn't realize that a proof is equivalent to a computer program, and "checking a proof" is equivalent to running a computer program to completion. This falls into the land of the halting problem. If the proof contains infinite loops, the proof-checker will not know, and will not be able to complete the proof-checking. So, here, the fact that is "true but lacking a proof" (the type of idea that Shallit agrees is not possible to check) is the fact that the proof is wrong. Here's an example. This is a proof that there exists positive even numbers that are not divisible by two (an obviously false statement): Definition: a number N is not divisible by 2 if N modulo 2 is 1. Definition: the first positive even number is 2. Definition: the next even number after N is N + 2. (1) Let x = 2. (2) Let y = x modulo 2. (3) If y is equal to 1, the proof is complete. (4) Add 2 to x for the next even number. (5) Go to step two. A naive automatic proof checker will not be able to determine that this proof is false. Now, as rational human beings, we can find ways to show that this proof is false a priori. It is theoretically possible to encode those *specific* reasons into a proof-checker. However, there are an infinite number of ways to be wrong in this cyclical way, and you can't encode them all into a proof-checker. Therefore, even if you fix the problem for this particular proof, the general problem will remain. johnnyb

@ AaronS1978 - The curious thing about this is I'm not entirely sure why Shallit is even in the conversation. Perhaps just a personal grudge? Not really sure. I find it odd that he didn't even really comment on the meat of the article - using mathematics to teach students about wider areas of life. Just a pedantic quabble. What's weirder is he doubled-down on an earlier time when he also decided I was wrong, but in that case he wasn't right in some pedantic sense, he was just plain wrong. Not sure why he keeps bringing that up. johnnyb

SmartAz It’s not just darwinists it’s any arrogant fool that thinks they can’t be wrong, They get puffy when they are questioned and they start tossing out insults to make themselves feel better, it’s not that they are an expert, clearly Jeffrey is not one of those experts AaronS1978

Darwinists always argue their case by insulting the opposition. They only offer facts to support their insults. SmartAZ

Yes, because this OP is actually about Shallit's article, and the subject of "what is a polynomial" came up here also, so what I wrote in the other thread is more appropriate here. hazel

a bit of cross threading? kairosfocus

Reposting from the thread on calculus texts:

13 Hazel August 20, 2019 at 8:30 am I didn’t enjoy Shallit’s snarky article (including the fact that this has absolutely nothing to do with creationism???), but I had some similar reactions to how Johnny described the situation. Johnny writes,

Going back to our mathematics example, it is indeed impossible to write sine and cosine in terms of standard polynomials. However, a key assumption makes this impossibility proof valid. The assumption is that we write sine and cosine in terms of a finite number of polynomial terms. If, however, we allow ourselves an infinite number of polynomial terms, we can indeed write sine and cosine in terms of polynomial functions.

Polynomials, by definition (not by assumption), have a finite number of terms, so it is true that you can’t write sine and cosine as polynomials. You can write sine and cosine as power series, which have an infinite number of terms. Note that each term in the power series for sine and cosine is a monomial, so technically a power series is made of “polynomial terms”, but the power series itself is not a polynomial. So my impression of Johnny’s article that it made way too much of the “possible/impossible” distinction. The fact that sine and cosine can be written as power series is cool, and a major thing for students to learn. However I think the way Johnny describes the situation to his students is a bit misleading about some key terms.

hazel

Although the probabilities against Darwinian processes generating functional proteins and/or functional information are devastating in and of themselves,,, For instance, as the following article states, "the possibility of finding even one that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,

Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules – March 2015 Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say. That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.” The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,, “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?” https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552

And as the follow up article to the preceding paper stated, "There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,"

Quantum Critical Proteins – Stuart Lindsay – Professor of Physics and Chemistry at Arizona State University – 2018 Excerpt: The difficulty with this proposal lies in its improbability. Only an infinitesimal density of random states exists near the critical point.,, Gábor Vattay et al. recently examined a number of proteins and conducting and insulating polymers.14 The distribution for the insulators and conductors were as expected, but the functional proteins all fell on the quantum-critical distribution. Such a result cannot be a consequence of chance.,,, WHAT OF quantum criticality? Vattay et al. carried out electronic structure calculations for the very large protein used in our work. They found that the distribution of energy-level spacings fell on exactly the quantum-critical distribution, implying that this protein is also quantum critical. There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,, http://inference-review.com/article/quantum-critical-proteins Gábor Vattay et al., “Quantum Criticality at the Origin of Life,” Journal of Physics: Conference Series 626 (2015); Gábor Vattay, Stuart Kauffman, and Samuli Niiranen, “Quantum Biology on the Edge of Quantum Chaos,” PLOS One 9, no. 3 (2014)

Although the probabilities against Darwinian processes generating functional proteins and/or functional information are devastating in and of themselves, far more problematic for Darwinists is the fact that immaterial information is now shown to be its own distinct physical entity that, although it can interact in a 'top down' fashion with matter and energy, is, directly contrary to Darwinian presuppositions, a completely separate entity that can exist independently of its representation on a material substrate. In the following 2010 experimental realization of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment, it was demonstrated that knowledge of a particle’s location and/or position converts information into energy.

Maxwell’s demon demonstration turns information into energy – November 2010 Excerpt: Scientists in Japan are the first to have succeeded in converting information into free energy in an experiment that verifies the “Maxwell demon” thought experiment devised in 1867.,,, In Maxwell’s thought experiment the demon creates a temperature difference simply from information about the gas molecule temperatures and without transferring any energy directly to them.,,, Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-maxwell-demon-energy.html

And as the following 2010 article stated about the preceding experiment, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,”

Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010 Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform

And as the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,, quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,, Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,

The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell put it, “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.” In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply. They’ve found new, quantum versions of the laws that scale up to the originals. Rewriting the theory from the bottom up has led experts to recast its basic concepts in terms of its subjective nature, and to unravel the deep and often surprising relationship between energy and information — the abstract 1s and 0s by which physical states are distinguished and knowledge is measured.,,, Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/

Again to repeat that last sentence, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,” Think about that statement for a second. These experiments completely blow the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution, (presuppositions about information being merely ’emergent’ from some material basis), out of the water, and tie the creation of information directly to the knowledge of the 'observer' in quantum theory. In other words, contrary to the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, information, particularly this ‘thermodynamic positional information’, is now experimentally shown, via quantum information theory, to be its own distinct physical entity that, although it can interact with matter and energy, is its own independent, ‘non-local’ beyond space and time, entity that is separate from matter and energy. On top of all that, this ‘thermodynamic positional information’ is found, via quantum information theory, to be “a property of an observer who describes a system.” In other words, Intelligent Design, and a direct inference to God as the Intelligence behind life, (via infinite regress to the omniscient Mind of God), has, for all intents and purposes, achieved experimental confirmation. Of note to the "infinite regress" to the omniscient Mind of God,,

A Mono-Theism Theorem: Gödelian Consistency in the Hierarchy of Inference - Winston Ewert and Robert J. Marks II - June 2014 Abstract: Logic is foundational in the assessment of philosophy and the validation of theology. In 1931 Kurt Gödel derailed Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica by showing logically that any set of consistent axioms will eventually yield unknowable propositions. Gödel did so by showing that, otherwise, the formal system would be inconsistent. Turing, in the first celebrated application of Gödelian ideas, demonstrated the impossibility of writing a computer program capable of examining another arbitrary program and announcing whether or not that program would halt or run forever. He did so by showing that the existence of a halting program can lead to self-refuting propositions. We propose that, through application of Gödelian reasoning, there can be, at most, one being in the universe omniscient over all other beings. This Supreme Being must by necessity exist or have existed outside of time and space. The conclusion results simply from the requirement of a logical consistency of one being having the ability to answer questions about another. The existence of any question that generates a self refuting response is assumed to invalidate the ability of a being to be all-knowing about the being who was the subject of the question. http://robertmarks.org/REPRINTS/2014_AMonoTheismTheorem.pdf

Thus Shallit, and all the other Darwinian blowhards, can blow their own horns all they want about how much smarter they are than the rest of us who believe in God, but, as far as empirical science itself is concerned, Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework are now shown to not even be on the correct theoretical foundation in order to properly understand molecular biology in the first place. Specifically, the present finding that 'non-local' quantum coherence/entanglement is ubiquitous throughout molecular biology is simply devastating to the entire reductive materialistic foundation that Darwinian evolution rests upon.

Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – Part II - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSig2CsjKbg How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate – video (how quantum information theory and molecular biology correlate – 27 minute mark) https://youtu.be/4f0hL3Nrdas?t=1634

And whereas atheistic materialists are at a complete loss to explain how particles can be instantly correlated in molecular biology, on the other hand Christian Theists readily have a beyond space-time, matter-energy, cause that they can appeal to in order to explain the pervasive quantum non-locality within molecular biology :

Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

bornagain77

Barry

How dare you classify me as someone who puts people in classifications!

Barry

Yes, but we all know that Shallit’s materialist fundamentalism drove him barking mad years ago.

Can we assume that you were just joking with the first comment? Brother Brian

I used to do a real neat graphical demonstration in calc class (using a graphing program) about how every partial sum of the power series for cosine was a polynomial whose graph paralleled the cosine graph for a longer and longer distance before the polynomial diverged off to infinite y-values. For instance, the simple parabola y = 1 - x^2/2! (the first two terms of the power series) nestled nicely into the "bump" the cosine curve makes at x = 0, and could be used to approximate cos x for very small values of x. If you then add the next term in the power series, you get a 4th degree polynomial that nestles above the curve, the next 6th degree polynomial below the curve, etc. But the power series itself is not a polynomial. hazel

By accepted mathematical definition, a polynomial has a finite number of monomial terms with positive or zero exponents. Wikipedia writes, "a polynomial can either be zero or can be written as the sum of a finite number of non-zero terms." A power series, which is an infinite series, such as that for sine or cosine, is not a polynomial. hazel

Barry:

Yes, but we all know that Shallit’s materialist fundamentalism drove him barking mad years ago.

Mathematics shouldn't exist in a materialistic world. Shallit lives in constant conflict with hisself. ET

polistra- polynomials have a finite number of variables and coefficients. As you said, poly means many. And infinity > many, infinitely greater, even. ET

Yes, but we all know that Shallit's materialist fundamentalism drove him barking mad years ago. Barry Arrington

it seems that Shallit missed recent David Gelernter article. Alright, Gelernter is not a real creationist, but he is no longer a Darwinist. David Gelernter, professor of computer science, Yale University "Giving up Darwin" (May 2019) https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/giving-up-darwin/ martin_r

There is considerable irony here. ID people do the detailed math to show that Darwinism cannot work for the major changes attributed to it. Yet Darwinists either refuse to look at the math, or do their own handwaving, without serious math, to "explain" how their theory manages to perform the magic. Math helps to disprove Darwinism, yet a Darwinist complains that we can't do math? Fasteddious

those who do understand NDT Darwinism know it is a failed hypothesis morphed into a faith based doctrine, so being good at math might provide cover for the flawed hypothesis. while the mantle of science is within ID, the highest probability ID is w/in YeC and one need only know basic math to see why the empirical observations can all add up w/in YeC and falsify all deep-time dependent scientific hypotheses and assumptions. one might conclude Darwinists are more foolish than the average third grader and have more faith in NDT than the Pope has in YeC. reference the YeC Moshe Emes series for Torah and science alignment. Pearlman

David Berlinski: https://infogalactic.com/info/David_Berlinski ScuzzaMan

Funny that Shallit thinks that you have to be a Darwinist to understand math since Darwin himself did not understand math (in fact he found it to be 'repugnant')

Charles Darwin- The Cambridge Years (1828-1831) Excerpt: Darwin’s main weakness was in mathematics, a subject he sometimes despaired of ever mastering. About math he once remarked, “I stick fast in the mud at the bottom (of a river), and there I shall remain.” http://www.newtonsapple.org.uk/charles-darwin-the-cambridge-years-1828-1831/ “During the three years which I spent at Cambridge my time was wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned, as completely as at Edinburgh and at school. I attempted mathematics, and even went during the summer of 1828 with a private tutor (a very dull man) to Barmouth, but I got on very slowly. The work was repugnant to me, chiefly from my not being able to see any meaning in the early steps in algebra. This impatience was very foolish, and in after years I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense. But I do not believe that I should ever have succeeded beyond a very low grade.” Charles Darwin, 1887 – Recollections of the Development of my Mind & Character,

I guess according to Shallit's criteria of "anyone who doubts Darwin is automatically disqualified from understanding math", then that must mean that Wolfgang Pauli, Murray Eden and Gregory Chaitin don't understand math either:

Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Wolfgang Pauli on the Empirical Problems with Neo-Darwinism - Casey Luskin - February 27, 2012 Excerpt: "In discussions with biologists I met large difficulties when they apply the concept of 'natural selection' in a rather wide field, without being able to estimate the probability of the occurrence in a empirically given time of just those events, which have been important for the biological evolution. Treating the empirical time scale of the evolution theoretically as infinity they have then an easy game, apparently to avoid the concept of purposesiveness. While they pretend to stay in this way completely 'scientific' and 'rational,' they become actually very irrational, particularly because they use the word 'chance', not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word 'miracle.'" Wolfgang Pauli (pp. 27-28) - Letter by Pauli to Bohr of February 15, 1955 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.437.5253&rep=rep1&type=pdf HISTORY OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY - WISTAR DESTROYS EVOLUTION Excerpt: A number of mathematicians, familiar with the biological problems, spoke at that 1966 Wistar Institute,, For example, Murray Eden showed that it would be impossible for even a single ordered pair of genes to be produced by DNA mutations in the bacteria, E. coli,—with 5 billion years in which to produce it! His estimate was based on 5 trillion tons of the bacteria covering the planet to a depth of nearly an inch during that 5 billion years. He then explained that the genes of E. coli contain over a trillion (10^12) bits of data. That is the number 10 followed by 12 zeros. *Eden then showed the mathematical impossibility of protein forming by chance. http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/Encyclopedia/20hist12.htm Murray Eden, as reported in “Heresy in the Halls of Biology: Mathematicians Question Darwinism,” Scientific Research, November 1967, p. 64. “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. http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/ReferencesandNotes32.html "For many years I thought that it is a mathematical scandal that we do not have a proof that Darwinian evolution works." Gregory Chaitin - Proving Darwin 2012 - Highly Respected Mathematician Active Information in Metabiology – Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Robert J. Marks II – 2013 Except page 9: Chaitin states [3], “For many years I have thought that it is a mathematical scandal that we do not have proof that Darwinian evolution works.” In fact, mathematics has consistently demonstrated that undirected Darwinian evolution does not work. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2013.4/BIO-C.2013.4

Of course, there are some who may dare say that it is Shallit himself, since he believes in Darwinism, is the one who does not really understand math. bornagain77

Infinite number of terms not a polynomial? That's just dumb, even by normal calculus-class methods. Calculus teachers always emphasize that you can't reach infinity, so limits are "approaching a really large number." A polynomial with a really large number of terms is still a polynomial. Poly means many, for heavens sake. polistra

Why can't evolutionists do science? They definitely don't understand the concept... ET